The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1939. "ISOLATION" NO LONGER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 28, 3 February 1939, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1939. "ISOLATION" NO LONGER.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance,. And the gpod that we can do.

111 1937 the United States Congress passed a Neutrality Act. It was passed as " the outcome of a prolonged agitation conducted by men who believe that-President "Wilson's intervention was a ghastly mistake," men who believed that " from 1914 to 1917 the American people were bamboozled and seduced into declaring war because they had become financially, economically and morally entangled with the British Empire." The avowed object of the new law was to prevent another such "entanglement" if another war occurred. Yet now, not two years later, with the ■Powers at peace, the' President of the • United States is reported. to be aiding Britain and France against the dictatorship States "in every way short of war." Ho j has "taken sides" most emphatically, and, it would seem, irrevocably. Further —and even more significant—Mr. Hoover, tlie :President's bitter political enemy, openly warns the dictators that in certain circumstances the American people, "disregarding all other . questions," may join in a European war. Previous criticism of Mr. Roosevelt, on the score that he is ■ over-fond of delivering homilies to Europe 'from the safe security of the other side of the Atlantic, is now robbed of much of its •point. The President is no longer just j talking, lie is acting. By so doing lie is " taking political.risks, ai\d, the fact that he, ~a consummate politician, is faking those • risks is perhaps the most significant sign ,i that the American people are with him. • This remarkable swing of opinion, which, • it seems, has gone much farther than most British people imagined or hoped, is ' potentially the most important development in : the international situation for years. " Who would' be on o'lir side," asked a British publicist recently, " if the guns went off?", Answering his own question, he said, "France," arid-then admitted that it was difficult to liame another nation with ' confidence. Now, unless both Mr. lioosevelfc and Mr. Hoover .have, misread tke minds of ■ their countrymen, and unless they are repudiated, it is possible to say that in a war of aggression against Britain and France, and more particularly in a war in which a: devastating bombing attack was launched on London and Paris, the United States would'be on our side, too, and much more speedily than last time. That .knowledge—or perhaps it will bo more .:pi - u'dentf , 'to describo it as a-reasonable espe.ctafion—will be' : 'conif<irtiiig to British people in every part of the world, and to all .other fronds of democracy. But the American development should not be regarded only as the alignment of a great nation for :the-purposes of a possible war; it is primarily a resolute stand for the purpose of preserving the peace. For that purposo it is'more valuable than would lie. the doubling in size of the British Navy and the French; Army. . "To keep the peace,'?/ says 'Mr. .-Chamberlain, "Britain miist.be strong." ,Here,,if rightly received by ,the' : British Government, is an enormous accession of'strength, not to Britain as such, l>ut to the forces of all, who believe in the supremacy of law and in government by consent of the governed. More precisely, it is an accession' of strength to those 'who believe- that- international' disputes, which are inevitable, must not be " settled " again by the will of "the stronger disputant, but by peaceful negotiation.