AMERICA AND WAR.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 108, 7 April 1936, Page 9

AMERICA AND WAR.

SENATOR BORAH’S ADVICE. CRITICISM OF BRITAIN. At the 204th anniversary celebrations of the brith of General Washington in the United States, Senator Borah (Idaho) made an eloquent plea for the rigid maintenance of a foreign policy deducible from Washington’s advice that “the great rule of conduct for us in regard .to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible.” He strongly attacked the argument—advanced by foreign propagandists- and used by many Americans —that the traditional policy of American neutrality “impedes or embarrasses the cause of peace and weighs against the betterment- of world conditions.”

A statement from Geneva that in the event of world- war “by reason of our adhering to the policy of neutrality the moral responsibility lor such an event must rest upon the United States” he bitterly resented. BRITAIN’S PART.

The whole thing from Senator Borah’s point of view is “but another method of drawing the United States into every controversy that can arise in Europe,’’ and it appeared that Great Britain must bear the largest share of the blame. When Japan invaded Manchuria, said Senator Borah, and the then Secretary of State, Mr Stimson, appealed to the nations dominant in the League for co-operation in the interest of treaty and territorial integrity, Great Britain, through her accredited spokesman declared, “with some degree of bluntness,” that she would remain neutral.

Now the scene changes because national interests change. Italy, no doubt somewhat advised, but apparently not sufficiently advised by the Manchurian incident, invading Ethiopia. Here British interests were directly affected. The British Navy moves to the scene of danger. There is no longer neutrality because it is not to the interest of the British Empire to have neutrality. There is an aggressor in this instance because the interests of Great Britain are vitally affected. Senator Borah did not deny Great Britain’s right to be neutral in the Manchurian affair and unneutral in the Ethiopian affair, but “I deny her right, or the right of any group of nations, to brand the United States as favouring war or as pursuing a course selfish and immoral in adopting the policy of neutrality as against the Italian and Ethiopian controversy or any other controversy in Europe.”