ROOSEVELT MOVE

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 111, 13 May 1939, Page 10

ROOSEVELT MOVE

OPINION IN THE U.S.A.

REFLECTED IN HIS APPEAL

DICTATORS HATED

The domestic background of Mr. Roosevelt's great gesture is well worth a glance as the world waits for the German and Italian response, wrote Sir Arthur Willert in the "Daily Telegraph and Morning Post" on April 18. It reveals a stiffening in the American attitude towards the European crisis which would have been impossible even a few months ago. It also reveals an encouraging improvement in the AngloAmerican relationship.

As everyone - knows, Washington in recent years has been the scene of a struggle between the isolationists, who think that the Western hemisphere can be insulated from outside troubles, and those who feel that the best way to escape disaster is to help the peaceloving elements in Europe to prevent war, or, if that is impossible, to help them to win it. President Roosevelt and his Foreign Minister, Mr. Hull, are the leaders of the latter school. I was in Washington last month just before the Prime Minister took his momentous decision over Poland. It was clear then that, though far stronger than they had been even a few months ago, those two statesmen were still not in a position to take action such as they have now taken, much as they wanted to do something of the sort. What has happened is roughly this. The White House and the State Department made up their minds long ago that the dictators were dangerous and could not be trusted. , There can be no harm now in repeating a conversation which I had with President Roosevelt in March, 1936, on the day after Herr Hitler had marched his troops into ■the Demilitarised Zone. The President asked me whether I thought that this infraction of the Treaty of Versailles would mean war. I said that I thought not, that, for one thing, we British would not fight to prevent Germany shaking off what seemed to many of us to be an obsolescent servitude. "IF YOU DON'T FIGHT NOW . . . " "You may be right," he replied, "but surely, if you do not fight now, it will only be a case of fighting in five years' time." The American public in those days was just as afraid of war as the President. But the reasoning behind its fears was nebulous. It did not grasp the ruthless sweep of Herr Hitler's ambitions. It thought that war would mean simply a European scrap, with, perhaps, trouble with Signor Mussoilni over the Mediterranean. Now it realises how completely Herr Hitler dominates the. dictatorial trade union and how grandiose his plans are, and is nervous of him. ' " Herr Hitler's "radio personality" has ha.d much to do with this development. That was one of the first discoveries I made during an exhaustive tour of the United States, just completed. My note book records many] conversations to that effect. Said a rough old sheep farmer of the Western deserts, "There can surely be no peace for Europe while Hitler is in power." "Why," I asked, "do you think that?" "I have heard him on the radio/ he answered, "that's enough for me." Pan-German activities in the Western hemisphere come next in the list of factors which are driving the United States into active distrust of the new Germany. There one is reminded of the equally swift hardening of American opinion which preceded the entry of the United States into the Great War in 1917. At the end of 1916 President Wilson had been elected on a keep-us-out-of-war platform. Then came the recrudescence of promiscuous submarining by Germany, and, what was' more important, the famous Zimmerman letter. , MEXICO AS AN ENEMY. In that letter, intercepted by our Secret Service and handed over to the American Government who published it, Herr Zimmerman, the German Foreign Minister, suggested to his representative in Mexico that Mexico should be brought into the war against the United States if the United States joined the Allies. . Now the world-embracing activities of Herr Hitler's pan-Germanism are being brought home by constant stories of Nazi propaganda, penetration, and anti-American intrigues from Mexico City down to Punta d'Arenas and by the blasting, blustering activities of the Nazi organisations in the United States. These organisations are frowned upon by the great majority of respectable German-Americans who are among the best of citizens. ' But with the lower German elements they undoubtedly have influence. A shrewd .student of affairs in Chicago, for instance, estimated that about half the great German population in that city, the third biggest white city in the world, inclined towards Herr Hitler. .Another thing which, he said, was arousing the suspicion of Chicagoans was a great and technically unwarranted increase in the staff of the German Consulate-General, a development noticeable in other. American cities. NAZI GOODS BOYCOTT. | Another German activity adversely commented upon is the recruitment of working men of German blood to return to Germany. The Jewish persecution has, of course, provided many nails for the coffin of the reputation of Nazi Germany. It has consolidated the very strong Jewish-American influence; it has helped to convince Americans that their President is right in his unrestrained condemnation of Nazi brutality and that Herr Hitler really is as bad as he sounds. It is the strongest single ingredient in the boycott which Americans tell one is growing up against German goods. In ports as widely separated as New York, Galveston, and San Francisco one heard the same stories of German ships sailing with a minimum of freight, animate and inanimate. In j all parts of the country questions in i department stores as to whether there j was discrimination against German goods brought an affirmative answer. Cinema theatres everywhere told the same tale in their peculiar but significant language—silence or hisses for' the dictators and their militarist manifestations, applause and sympathy for the democracies, though not always for their leaders. THE NEED FOR SOLIDARITY. ' I remember particularly a film I chanced upon at Portland, Oregon. It started with the power of the printing press. The Bible was shown as still being the best-seller. But the Bible was being hard pressed by other books, by Lenin's works (silence), by "Mem Kanipf" (hisses). Then, after the American Constitution had been shown (cheers), there was a quick switch to the Boy Scout movement and its excellence for the inculcation of democracy (cheers), . American, British, French, and again American Boy Scouts (great cheering), with occasional glimpses of the trampling heels of militarism (hisses). Two things have kept that film, I hope more or less correctly, in my memory—first the cleverness of it.

secondly the fact that the implication of the necessity for democratic solidarity was recognised in the remote North-west just as readily as on the Atlantic coast.

But all through my tour I was conscious that something more was needed than the hardening of opinion against [the dictators to make it possible for the President to take definite action. That something was emphatic proof that the Western democracies could be as safely trusted as the dictatorships could be distrusted. One did not have to travel far to realise that except in limited circles in the big cities our Prime Minister's appeasement policy was looked upon askance. AN UNPRACTICAL POLICY. This policy was, in fact, felt to be ao unpractical as to be equivocal. I found that a Western politician with a world-famous name spoke for a vei*y large number of his fellow-citizens when he said that the trouble with the London and Paris Governments was that they distrusted the Reds more than they did Fascism and therefore were too prone to "play with the dictators." These suspicions and criticisms were a great handicap to Washington, until our sudden change of policy over Poland. "How can we help people who will not help themselves? If only you British would give us a lead," was the type of comment one got from those of the President's supporters whom one knew well enough to ask for frank replies to leading questions. The President's message to the dictators can thus be set down as being in a very important sense the most notable result that has as yet flowed from the sudden strengthening of our European policy. He could not have acted as he has done while the strongest of the European democracies was suspected of not pulling its Weight. The actual fate of his proposal obviously lies upon the knees of the dictators. This much can, however, j be said with, confidence. The fact; that it has been made, and has been received in the United States with far greater approval than it would have been even a month ago, mdi-, cates two things. The first is that the atmosphere of Anglo-American relations has been much cleared; and the second that, if they are really planning to deliver us over to another war, the dictators will now have' to reckon with the incalculable consequences of entering the war with the American nation on fire against their aspirations #nd methods and in a helpful mood towards their opponents.