NAVAL AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 162, 5 April 1938, Page 2

NAVAL AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS

United States Policy

NO FORMAL AGREEMENT WITH BRITAIN

The suggestions made in the United States Senate recently by the isolationist Senators that a formal understanding existed between Great Britain and the United States, both on foreign policy and naval action, were denied onjiehalf of the Administration.

The denial was made by Senator Pittman, Chairman, of the Seiihte Foreign Relations Committee, and Admiral Leahy, Chief of Naval Operations, who appeared before the Naval Affairs Committee of Congress. Mr. Vinson, chairman of the naval committee, asked Admiral Leahy if there were any truth in the statement that the United Staes Navy would join with Britain and France in policing the world. The admiral answered: “That is incorrect. The American programme is justified by the need of providing the United States with a naval strength of approximately the same proportion as the 5-5-3 ratio of the Washington and London naval treaties.” Senator Pittman issued a three-point statement clearing up the matters raised in the Senate debate.

He first explained that the remarks of Mr. Eden that _Brltain and the United States were in daily consultation referred only to the situation arising from the bombing of the American gunboat Pauay and the shelling of the British gunboat Ladybird in the Yangt.se River on December 12. They did not imply that a policy of general consultation on all phases of foreign policy was being followed. Secondly, Senator Pittman maintained that the Administration’s policy of non-interference gave the United States Government full freedom to take action whenever developments abroad affected American interests.

Ficially he explained that the word “quarantine” used by President Roosevelt in his Chicago speech on October 5 did not necessarily mean placing certain nations in medical quarantine, butkeeping sources of infection away from the United States—in other words, preventing other nations from interfering in United States affairs. Senator Pittman, in Informal conversation, drew a distinction between acts of the United States as a Government, and acts of the United States as a collection of individual citizens. There is nothing, he said, to prevent individual citizens from quarantining—or, to use the word t which he preferred, ostracising—aggressor nations, and from still maintaining the traditional American policy of independent action. The statement of Mr. Hirota, the Japanese Foreign Minister, in the Diet that “a state of war existed” between China and Japan turned attention once more to the possibility that the President would be forced to invoke the Neutrality Act. The general impression among officials was that Mr. Hirota’s exact shade of meaning had been lost in translation.

It is an open secret, said an American correspondent, that the President did not invoke the Neutrality Act because its terms must be applied against the victim as well as the aggressor and would have harmed China more than Japan. Now that Japan controls China’s most Important seaports, this reason no longer has the same weight.

For the sake of consistency, however, the President would not invoke the Act unless war were officially declared or an official announcement were made that a “state of war” existed.