Evening Post. FRIDAY, JANUARY 21, 1938. ROOSEVELT'S LESSON-BOOK

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 17, 21 January 1938, Page 8

Evening Post. FRIDAY, JANUARY 21, 1938. ROOSEVELT'S LESSON-BOOK

It was quite to be expected that President Roosevelt's naval j programme critics would seize the opportunity of demanding a clarification of his 'foreign policy. If the principle of going right to the heart of a matter, however delicate it may be, is justified, then the critics of the naval programme are justified, whether or not their demand for clarification causes Presidential embarrassment, They have a right to say that naval striking force and foreign policy are inevitably connected and almost inevitably co-ordinated; hence to ask for money far accelerated naval building is to invite such questions as whether the possession of added striking force means war by the direct route, or whether it means war by the indirect route, such as I economic and/or military sanctions or embargo applied to Japan. Is a bigger American navy a sign that the United States Government' expects. unprovoked aggression, or is it a preparatory piece of insurance against a day when Japan | will feel provoked by military sanctions or economic embargo, and will use force against American] and/or British possessions? The very important statement that the American people are opposed to a war by the indirect route — Japanese reaction against an American embargo—is made by a writer in the "Round Table." If China is to stand or fall by the American people's willingness to impose an embargo that means risk of war with Japan, then China, he says, will fall; but it must be borne in mind by the reader that he wrote before the sinking of the U.S. gunboat Panay, and it is a pre-Panay mentality which he has studied in America. With that reservation, the following quoted sentences command attention. They bear on the educative effort of the President and Secretary of State Hull to build up American opinion to a point at which an embargo might become practical; they also emphasise the lag of public opinion behind the educators:

A few days after the President's Chicago speech [hint of concerted "quarantine" action against lawless Powers] an important student of foreign affairs called on the President and asked him about the possibility of embargo or boycott policies. "Ah, my dear fellow," replied Mr. Koosevelt in effect, "you are on page 257; I am only "" page 2."

The ''Round Table" writer holds that American opinion, as he studied it, certainly will not tolerate page 257 today. It may not even prove tolerant of that page when (if) the White House teacher reaches it at some future dale.

He goes so far as to say that the feeling of the American people against risks of "involvement in foreign politics and wars" is so powerful that it could sweep the Roosevelt Administration into helpless disrepute if a serious false move were made. Why, then, was there not stronger criticism of the Chicago speech implying some sort of action to quarantine peacebreaking Powers? The answer offered is that President Roosevelt's genius for indefinite utterance, and for discovering words like "quarantine," gave critics little holding-ground; also, the President followed up the Chicago speech a day or two later by an assurance that he had "learned much" in the days, 1913 to 1921, when lie was in the Administration of President Woodrow Wilson, the great American martyr io foreign "involvement."

If it is clear that embargoes and boycotts are acts of hostility against which Japan might forcibly retaliate, then it is equally clear that the United States is not prepared to back up such policies with armed force. Public opinion, indeed, is not sure that the embargo chapter is in the book at all, even though the President believes it to be there. Certainly the American people would not tolerate the idea ot a war with Japan over

some Chinese provinces, nor upon any other terms short of a direct attack upon immediate American interests.

Not long after these lines were written the Japanese commanders in the field provided tills "direct attack" by sinking the Panay. An author who has just passed the proofs of page 2 of a book would not consider himself liable to be cross-examined as to what he is writing for page 257. But a President is in a somewhat different position. Critical or curious members of Congress who ask pertinent or impertinent questions concerning the 255 pages that arc not yet iii print must not be unduly snubbed if their votes are needed for the increased naval building. Clarification of the foreign policy linked with such a huge expenditure Ifc a liability of a democratic Government to its Parliament and public—a liability nearly always embarrassing to the diplomacy of democracies, and particularly so to a President who, outside as well as inside Congress, is engaged in "the uphill task of persuading the American public to take risks for peace. , . . It is to be doubted whether the American public fully realise what he is at, or will follow him if- they do." Meanwhile, the Japanese armies march. Along with the Washington message concerning the naval vote and foreign policy comes another on the subject of the "business recession," which persists in discussing itself and refuses to be hushed or driven into a recess. Terms .of co-operation between industry and the President are raised in a statement by "fifty of the nation's business leaders." Recently the Rt. Hon. Reginald McKenna, eminent banker, speaking at Birmingham, was reported as saying:

We understand how it has come about that the big American industrialists are declining to spend their resources in laying down new plant and in extending their businesses. We know that they are very angry with legislation in the United States and filled with the fear of what may happen to them in the future. We have no such conditions in- this country, and we have nothing similar. We need not anticipate any similar trade decline here.

Though Mr. McKenna adds that the action of American industrialists is understandable,' and is taken with a realisation of interests of both shareholders and employees, the attitude of these American employers is easily represented by their .political enemies as being antisocial and "a strike of capital." It is therefore important that a constructive, co-operation between President and big business should be arrived at with as little haggling as possible—important not only to the United States but to the world. "There has been an almost complete cessation of expenditure by the big industrial companies in the United States," Mr. McKenna is reported as saying, "and when they cease to buy raw materials, raw materials fall in price." A country that lives by the export of raw materials and food, such as New Zealand, and a country that thrives by big-scale business in steady markets, such as Britain, are both directly concerned in Mr. Roosevelt's two-fisted fight against the war-spectre without and the slump shadow within.