U.S. REBUFF TO GERMANY

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22594, 27 December 1938, Page 9

U.S. REBUFF TO GERMANY

MR WELLES’S ACTION SUPPORTED

OBJECTION TO “NAZI MANNERS”

dislike of dictatorships EXPRESSED

(DEITED PRESS ASSOCIATIOH—COETIUairr.) (Received December 24, L 1.30 a.m.) . WASHINGTON, December 23. Circumstances made it obvious that in his emphatic rejection of the German protest against the speech by Mr Harold L. Ickes (Secretary for the Interior) Mr Sumner Welles (Acting-Secretary of State) was acting with the approval and support of the White House.

Mr Roosevelt called on Mr Ickes and Mrs Ickes last night, after which Mr Ickes returned to the White House with him and remained for some time.

At the same time Senator Key Pittman, chairman of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, issued a prepared statement declaring flatly that the people of the United States do not like the Governments of Germany and Japan, or any form of dictatorial government, whether Communist or Fascist. “Mr Welles took the proper course, and the only course available in the circumstances,” states the “New York Times” in a leading article. “However, there was one phase of Mr Welles’s comment which may be misinterpreted. The suggestion may be seen that we believe we have the right to criticise Germany because the German press and officials criticise us and because W3 find the criticism objectionable. Actually the American people do not greatly care what the German officials and press think or say of them. Criticism from such sources is inevitable, and even necessary. “About Time”

“If the German press and its masters did not continue to sneer at our ways, traditions, and leaders, if they actually found in our way of life something in any degree commendable, we should have rea * son to suspect that something was deenlv wrong with us.” The “New York Herald-Tribune, in a leading article entitled, About Time,” states; “We cannot resist a feeling of profound satisfaction that we belong, perhaps, to the one nation in the world which is still able to make precisely the kind ot reply to the Nazis which Mr Welles m “For many years the Nazi Government has been behaving - With guttersnipe manners, yet manifesting amazing sensitivity to the slightest rough handling by others Other Powers haye been meekly bowing to these susceptibilities, but they are either allied with the Nazis, like Italy and Japan, are over-weak, or, like Britain and France, are overinvolved in the tangle of European politics and the Munich appeasement’ to dare to be one-quarter as rude to the Nazis as the Nazi propaganda machine is regularly rude lO everyone else. . , ~ “The French are cautious, and tne British quietly put the soft pedal on their own press. The United States, happily, occupies a position ot ootn strength and detachment, m which it is still free to tell the Germans what it thinks of them. It will not, of course, do any good, but it was about time that a statement of this kind was made.”

CONSIDERATION BY GERMANY

“WANTONLY SEEKING A

CONFLICT”

PRESS ATTACKS ON U.S,

(Received December 26, 7.10 p.m.)

BERLIN, December 24.

The German Foreign Office, which is considering the situation brought about by the United States reply to Germany’s protest against Mr Ickes’s speech, is suspending the controversy with Washington till after Christmas.

A political spokesman described the United States attitude as wantonly seeking a conflict with Germany, and as not in accord with the Monroe doctrine.

The German newspapers disregard the United States Government’s rejection of the protest, but numerous other alleged American shortcomings are denounced, including the sending of surplus flour to Spain, which the “Voelkischer Beobachter” declares is “brutally lengthening the terrorism of Red Spain, which alone will benefit, as the Nationalists have ample food supplies.”

WARSHIPS RETAINED IN ATLANTIC

U.S. MOVE ASCRIBED TO TENSION

(Received December 26, 7.5 p.m.)

WASHINGTON, December 23

The United States, it is announced, will maintain on a permanent basis the fleet of 35 warships assigned to the Atlantic last summer, possibly expanding this number in the future.

Observers here ascribe the move to. strained relations with Germany anc the general European tension.