FAVOURABLE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 306, 28 December 1939, Page 7

FAVOURABLE.

U.S. PUBLIC REACTION

President's Peace Letter To

Pope.

CHURCH LEADERS' RESPONSE.

United Press Association.—Copyright.

WASHINGTON, December 27.

Public reaction to President Roosevelt's peace letter to the Pope is overwhelmingly favourable. Roman Catholic, Protestant and Jewish leaders have responded to it cordially. The Apostolic Delegate, in a message to President Roosevelt regarding the latter's letter to the Pope, said: "The President's message brought joy to the Holy See because it. contained such high hopes of spiritual and civil benefits for the cause of peace." Mr. Roosevelt states that Mr. George Buttrick, president of the United States Federal Council of Churches of Christ, and Rabbi Cyrus Adler will confer with him to-morrow. The President expressed his satisfaction that Italy and the Holy See were working on parallel lines. He announced that he would exchange New Year greetings with King Victor Emmanuel and would say: "May the new year have in store for you Italians the peace and happiness we all so greatly desire." Is Peace More Feasible? "If President Roosevelt joined those calling for peace now at any price, the most surprised people in the world, except perhaps Hitler and his Inner Cabinet, would be Mr. Roosevelt's diplomatic aides," says Mr. Arthur Krock, chief Washington correspondent of the "New York Times." "Obviously, Mr. Roosevelt would thereby be accepting the German case and a method weakening that of the Allies. To ask Britain and France to sit with Hitler now at a peace table is to task tliem to confess they were wrong in going to war, and it is to inform Hitler and neutral countries, particularly the United States, to believe peace on his terms is more desirable than war for any objective. "There is no evidence that Americans generally have any such attitude. Certainly this Administration would never be pacifist to this degree. Because consequences of intervention by the President at present are so clear, reports of recent German peace feelers have not interested the President's closest aides. They have not heard that these approaches, if made, were accompanied by promises to substitute other methods for exterior aggression and internal despotism. If and when they are after proper consultation with the other belligerents the President may be expected to act, but not before."