The Press WEDNESDAY, APRIL 30, 1941. American Naval Help

Press, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23316, 30 April 1941, Page 6

The Press WEDNESDAY, APRIL 30, 1941. American Naval Help

Last week Colonel Knox and Mr Stimson, Secretaries for the Navy’ and for War respectively in the Roosevelt Administration, spoke emphatically of the need for measures to ensure that American war supplies for Great Britain do get to Great Britain and not to the bottom of the Atlantic. They spoke so forthrightly that both in Great Britain and in the United States newspaper and wireless commentators jumped to the conclusion that Mr Roosevelt had decided to use United States warships to convoy merchantmen at least part of the way across the Atlantic. At a press conference on Friday, however, Mr Roosevelt sprang an anti-climax by announcing, not convoys, but an extension of the neutrality patrol in the Atlantic. Mystified correspondents who pressed the President to explain the implications of the extended patrol system were met by polite evasions, The immediate reaction was an outburst of press attacks on the Administration for failing to m6ve with public opinion, and Mr Wendell Willkie demanded that the American public be given “ the full “ facts of the reported sinking of war materials “on the way to Great Britain.” Mr Roosevelt, at his press conference, had described a statement that 40 per cent, of supplies were being sunk as “ too high an estimate.” In his broadcast address on Sunday, however, Mr Winston Churchill appeared to cut the ground from under the feet of the Administration’s critics by professing “ indescribable relief ” at the “tremendous decisions lately taken by Mr “Roosevelt. . . .” The American fleet and flying-boats ■ [he said] have been ordered to. patrol the wide waters of the Western Hemisphere and to warn peaceful shipping of all nations outside the combat zone of the presence of lurking U-boats or cruisers belonging to the two aggressor nations. We British, therefore, will be able to concentrate our protecting forces far more upon the routes near home and take a far heavier toll of U-boats there. Since unduk optimism in interpreting events is foreign to Mr Churchill’s temperament, it is natural to assume that behind Mr Roosevelt’s “ extended neutrality patrol is a carefully worked out scheme of collaboration between the British and United States Navies, whereby United States warships and aeroplanes will act as “ spotters”’ Technically, this would involve no departure from legal neutrality on the part of the United States; and it is possible that Germany would not choose to declare it an act of war. . But the question arises how long a great and proud nation will be content to carry > out its' declared policy by means of makeshifts, subterfuges, and half measures. For clearly a neutrality patrol of the sort contemplated by Mr Roosevelt is not a neutrality . patrol at all, either in fact, or in intention. Does anyone suppose, for instance, that United States patrol vessels will warn German and Italian blockade-runners of the proximity of British naval craft—as they ought to do if their real purpose is to prevent the spread of warlike activities to the American neutrality zone? The intensified and extended patrol of the Atlantic outside the combat zone is simply an ingenious device for giving Great Britain all the assistance in dealing with German commerce raiders that can be given, short of ordering American warships to engage in overt acts of war. Such a policy does not satisfy those Americans who advocate all-out aid to Great Britain regardless of the consequences; and it is already being hotly—and justifiably—denounced by isolationists as dishonest. Ono ( should not, however, lose sight of. the possibility that Mr Roosevelt, an astute political tactician, may have foreseen and hoped for the outburst of criticism which his proposals have evoked. He is being blamed now, as he has been blamed before, for following public opinion instead of leading it. Perhaps it would be truer to say that he has evolved a technique of pushing public opinion aloVig in front* of him. ■ ’