REVISION BY CONGRESS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 70, 20 September 1939, Page 10

REVISION BY CONGRESS

U.S. NEUTRALITY LAW

PRESIDENT TO APPEAR IN

PERSON

(By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright.)

(Received September 20, 9 a.m.)

WASHINGTON, September 19,

President Roosevelt announced that he is planning to appear in person at a joint session of the Senate and the House of Representatives on September 21 to request revision of the neutrality law. .

Senator Borah said that apparently the increasing Russian-Japanese friendship might change the Administration's desire, for a cash-and-carry policy and lead President Roosevelt to seek a return to international law, entailing the abandonment of all the neutrality legislation. This, Senator Borah said, he would prefer to some things which might be offered.

Mr. W. Green, president of the Federation of Labour, said that the federation would be active .at the special session of Congress to urge strict neutrality and the prevention of war profiteering. :

The American "Law Journal," in an editorial, says the United States neutrality law conflicts with the international neutrality law as' it was previously understood, and applied. It adds that the United States, while a noncombatant in the last war, refused, despite a German protest, to depart from neutrality as it was previously understood in international law. The journal quotes the first volume of Kent's commentaries, 1826. in which it is held to be shown that neutrals may lawfully sell or carry contraband to belligerents, subject to the right of seizure in transit.

The fact that there is only one German ship taking refuge in the United States, compared with 83 when the United States declared war in 1917,- is interpreted in Washington as an indication that Germany fears that the United States will enter the present war.