NO CONCESSIONS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 182, 4 August 1939, Page 7

NO CONCESSIONS.

TO DICTATORSHIPS.

AMERICAN PEOPLE FIRM.

WAVERING BRITISH POIIOT.

"America is imieh less isolationist in attitude to-day than a year ago," s»id Mr. Lan F. G. Milner. a former New Zealand Rhedes Scholar, wTio arrived, back in the Dominion this morning by the Monterey, after two years in the United. States studying international relations under an American Commonwealth Fellowship. "Since Munich, and particularly since the final destruction of the Czechoslovak Republic, and the increasing interference with American rights in the Far East," he continued, "there has been

a general swing of opinion away from isolationism. It seems that Congress, in blocking President Roosevelt's desire for revision of the Neutrality Act, to assist the democracies against possible aggressors, is unresponsive to public opinion, and is actuated by political motives."

In Far Fast relations American feeling had been deeply stirred by Japanese provocation, Mr. Milner added. A recent poll to test opinion had shown that three-quarters of the American people favoured an arms embargo against Japan and. despite the isolationists in Congress, the Roosevelt Administration had broken off the 1011 treaty with Japan as a warning that the United States took its trj>*.ty obligations and the protection of its nationals seriously.

Another aspect of American opinion which impressed the outside observer, he stated, was hostility toward further concessions by the democratic Powers in their relationships with the dictatorships. Even before the end of 1938 a reliable straw vote disclosed that 57 per cent of Americans were in favour of the United States standing firm "at all costs," behind Britain and France, to resist further territorial aggression by Hitler and Mussolini. More recently, however, there had been doubts due to indications that Britain might be prepared to compromise for peace, and because of the protracted nature of the discussions with Russia.

If, at this stage, the Craigie—Arita understanding resulted in the abandonment of Britain's mild support for China, American public opinion would be seriously alienated, concluded Mr. Milner. Such a development might destroy the existing basis for American co-operation, both in the Far East and in tlie wider field of international a flairs.