MORE IN AFFAIRS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 31, 5 August 1939, Page 24

MORE IN AFFAIRS

PEOPLE OF AMERICA

MARCH OF EVENTS

INTERFERENCE WITH RIGHTS

(By Telegraph—Press Association.)

AUCKLAND, August 4,

"America is much less isolationist in her attitude today than a year ago," said Mr. Lan Milner, former New Zealand Rhodes Scholar, who arrived by the Monterey after two y-ears in America studying international relations under the American Commonwealth Fellowship. "Since Munich, and particularly since the final destruction of the Czechoslovak Republic, and the increasing interference with American rights in 1 the Far East, there has been a general swing of opinion away from isolationism. It seems that Congress, in blocking President Roosevelt's desire for revision of the Neutrality Act to assist the democracies against possible aggression) is unresponsive to public opinion and is actuated by political motives." Mr. Milner said that America has been deeply stirred by Japanese provocation. A recent poll to test public opinion showed that three-quarters of the American people favoured an arms embargo against Japan. The^re was also in America hostility towards further concessions by the democratic Powers in their relationships with dictatorships. The Americans favoured the United States standing firm "at all costs" behind Britain and France to resist further territorial aggression by Hitler and Mussolini. At the present stage the Craigie-Arita understanding has resulted in an abandonment of Britain's mild support for China. American public opinion would be seriously alienated by such a development and it might destroy the ■existing basis for American co-opera-tion, both in the Far East and the wider field of international affairs.