ROOSEVELT’S ADVISERS

Evening Star, Issue 22893, 26 February 1938, Page 20

ROOSEVELT’S ADVISERS

TWO SCHOOLS Of THOUGHT VARIED OUTLOOK ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright. WASHINGTON, February 25. Careful inquiries among high Government officials responsible for American foreign policy convince the correspondent of the Australian Associated Press that the immediate effect of Mr Anthony Eden’s resignation has been to strengthen the hands of the isolationists, but probably it has not affected the United States long range view. The more realistic groups of the State Department can be said not to have been surprised at Mr Eden’s resignation, but they are not a little surprised at the time it came. It can also be said that the _ realistic groups are not sorry over his leave-taking, not because they do not sympathise with his viewpoint, but because the strong isolationists here are extremely suspicious of his efforts, alleging that they are designed or destined to involve the United States in foreign entanglements. These isolationists have proved the single greatest force of interference with the State Department’s conduct of American foreign affairs. President Roosevelt’s position is described as something in the nature of an umpire. It can now be said that the concepts of his Chicago speech concerning quarantining aggressor nations have not been _ acceptable to the bulk of American opinion and that they have been abandoned by the President himself. It is stressed that President Roosevelt is trying to keep the door open to both schools of his advisers, the isolationists and parallel actionists. The State Department may be inclined to dislike to see England negotiating with dictator Powers but is hardly uhwillirig to accept the benefits, if any arise from the situation.

It is felt that Britain, if released from her Mediterranean preoccupations, is likely to make a definite in the Far East. Some quarters conjecture that this _ will possibly take the form of stationing half a dozen battleships at Singapore as a token of her determination to make redress for her position in the Pacific. Such a move would immeasurably strengthen the parallel actionists here, and it even stresses that the success of the AngloItalian negotiations would automatically prove a restraining influence upon the clique in Japan. The best informed circles here are completely convinced that any action, either by England or America, in the Far East would necessarily be parallel. Considerable interest has been aroused here by Herr Hitler’s references last Sunday to the Pacific, and diplomatic circles interpret his remarks to mean that ho is not aiming at New Guinea, as well as assuring Japan that he does not aim at her mandates.