THREAT OF AXIS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 116, 19 May 1941, Page 6

THREAT OF AXIS

CONTROL OF TRADE

ENCIRCLEMENT OF U.S.A.

PRESIDENT'S STAND

WASHINGTON, May 18

President Roosevelt, in a formal statement opening Foreign Trade Week, declared that the dictator nations had already achieved a serious economic encirclement of the United States. He summoned all Americans to resist the economic slavery to which Germany and her allies would subject the world.

"America is heading into a worldwide crisis of truly desperate intensity and aggression menacing the economic, social, and spiritual framework of our democratic way of life," he said. "It is idle for us to talk of the future ol oi-eign trade unless we are ready now to defend the principles on which it is and must be based. That defence calls most urgently on every American for his immediate utmost effort."

Stating that a totalitarian victory would mean that world trade would be controlled for the benefit of the Axis, he added that this was a fact attested by officially inspired German announcements. Trade in such a world would be merely another weapon for further ruthless aggression and subjugation.—UP A.