Isolationists’ Efforts to Block Neutrality Revision

Manawatu Times, Volume 66, Issue 266, 8 November 1941, Page 7

Isolationists’ Efforts to Block Neutrality Revision

SENATOR WHEELER’S NINE-HOUR SPEECH Received Friday. 10.30 p.m. Tho House isolationist leader (Representative Hamilton Fish) introduced a resolution calling for a declaration of war against Germany. The resolution would also authorise the President "to employ the entire naval and military forces of the United States to carry on tho war against Germany." Mr. Fish admitted that he opposed the resolution but said he believed it would be defeated by three to one, and declared: “The time has come for & showdown. If the President wants to put us into war he should do it in the honest and honourable American way and send a message to Congress." Senator Wheeler (the Senate isolationist leader) said: “Wfe are sending our boys out to sea in destroyers out of repair because 'our navy yards are filled with British ships." He then read newspaper clippings quoting letters from sailors in the sunken destroyer Reuben James supporting his charge that the destroyer needed repairing but went out from Boston unrepaired because the navy yard was too busy repairing British ships. Senator Wheeler added: "I haven’t any jobs to offer you. I haven't any patronage or any judgeships I can hold out. But I appeal to you as T have never appealed before in the name of America, in the name of her mothers and fathers, don't take this country into war."

Senator Wheeler’s speech took nearly nine hours and was spread ever two days.

The New York Times’ Washington correspondent says the Treasury is seeking a new Tax* Bill for the calendar

year 1942 containing levies designed to yield 4.800,000,000 dollars in addition to 3,300,000,000 dollars in new levies enacted this year. The Treasury proposes to increase the income and social security taxes, both collectable at the source * by deduction from workers'

The spokesman for the Office of Production Management told the Industrialists Convention at Cincinatti that United States production was now 45 per cent, the 1929 peak. They were producing 2000 planes monthly and 10 light and five medium tanks daily. During the first 90 days of 1942 American shipyards would produce a ship daily and they had almost reached that figure now. Two million more workman were employed than in 1929.