ROOSEVELT POLICY

Greymouth Evening Star, 4 February 1939, Page 7

ROOSEVELT POLICY

BREACH OF NEUTRALITY ?

FULL INFORMATION ASKED,

[by CABLE —PRESS ASSN. —COPYBIGHT.]

WASHINGTON, February 3.

Continuous pressure on the President over his foreign policy is expected to induce him to make a socalled “fireside chat” in the near future to clarify the position and to reassure the people. The former member of the House of Representatives, Mr Fish, known as Mr Roosevelt’s ’’best hater,” has accused the President of entering into a quasi-military alliance’ with France, and also with the intent of fortifying Guam Island in the Pacific so that it would be “an arrow aimed -at the heart and the life blood of Japan.” An indication that the U.S.A, foreign policy situation is rapidly coming to a head is ,seen in a formal statement, which has been issued by nine Republican members of the United States House Foreign Affairs Committee. It declared: “We, the minority members of the committee, deplore, and protest against the. unneutral actions, and the, secret methods that have been employed by the President, which would not have been known to the American people, except through the accidental injury to the French flying officer on January 26 at Los -Angeles. We have no objection to the sale of aeroplanes to any nation with which we have diplomatic relations, but we insist that such secret and -un-neutral acts will entangle us in foreign conflicts, and will endanger the peace, of America. We urge the President to, present all of the facts openly to the American people, (and to uphold our traditional foreign policy of neutrality, non-intervention, and peace. The American people, irrespective of party, are opposed to being on the committee of any war programme through secret diplomacy.”

“SECRET” SOLD TO BRITAIN.

NEW YORK, February 2.

A forecast of something still more sensational than the sale of an advanced type of American war-planes to France has been given by Senator Nye,” says the Washington correspondent of the “New York HeraldTribune.” Senator Nye stated that to-night he has received reports that the American Army’s most prized possession, its (anti-aircraft gun director, has been sold to Britain. Senator Nye said that the intrumerit sold to Britain, the anti-aircraift gun director, had been the most closely guarded (Secret of the Army until last Summer, when a “deal” was made with Britain. The director has the power of focusing a radio beam on an approaching aeroplane by picking up a faint electrical discharge from its spark plugs, and’ then automatically training the anti-aircraft batteries on the machine, long before the eye or the car can sense its approach.

The release of this to Britain is understood to have occurred after Mr Bullitt (U.S.A. Minister at Paris) persuaded Mr Roosevelt on the subject of the urgency of the situation abroad.