BILL FOR AID TO BRITAIN

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 38, 14 February 1941, Page 7

BILL FOR AID TO BRITAIN

DEBATE STARTS MONDAY

DESTROYERS ISSUE

COL. KNOX SEES PRESIDENT

(By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright.)

(Received February 14, noon.) WASHINGTON, February 13. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved the Aid to Britain Bill by 15 votes to 8 and sent it to the Senate. The proposal to restrict the President's authority in connection with United States armed forces going out of the Western Hemisphere was rejected by the committee. < The measure passed by the Senate committee is substantially the same as that already passed by the House. The debate on the Bill in the Senate will begin on Monday, and it is hoped to restrict it to a fortnight. The Secretary of the Navy, Colonel Knox, and President Roosevelt conferred at White House on the question of the possibility of transferring i more destroyers to Britain, after which Colonel Knox stated that he has not revised his original opinion ■"but he did not preclude the possibility that Mr. Roosevelt might overrule him. ADEQUATE PEACE PLAN. • Senator Austin, a supporter of the Aid Bill, said that aid to Britain should be conditioned by an assurance of an j peace plan" which would j guarantee the maintenance of the Anglo-American ideals of freedom. "Let us be sure that she will present our views at the peace table," said Senator Austin. He asserted that England would not survive without America's aid. "We should have a guarantee," he continued, "that she will stand actively with us and not abandon us as in the case of Manchukuo."

Senator Pepper said that the Bill indicates a "new unity on the part of the American Congress and the American people towards the aggression of dictators. This Bill marks the promulgation of an affirmative foreign policy for the United States. Best of all it is a policy that comes from the people's Congress so that the dictators will know that the democracies in times of great emergency can act in a democratic but effective way."