THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS WEDNESDAY, APRIL 20, 1938 AMERICA'S FOREIGN POLICY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23017, 20 April 1938, Page 10

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS WEDNESDAY, APRIL 20, 1938 AMERICA'S FOREIGN POLICY

When will the American mind be made up as to the part the United States shall play in world affairs? It has been all things at once and nothing long. On occasion, as in the national entry into the Great War, a strong emotional impulse, widely felt, can dictate, for a while, decisive action. But such an experience is rare. More often, by reason of a cleavage of opinion—or cleavages, for even within groups fairly homogeneous are important differences — the national course is faltering and unsure. At the present time this is so. Two items of news published today accentuate the doubts that mark American foreign policy, existing within it and therefore :in the thought of onlookers. One item describes the report of the Senate's Naval Affairs Committee as emphasising the need for a. navy capable of controlling extensive ocean areas —because the United States can be defeated and conquered by the obstruction of American foreign commerce at points thousands of miles away. The other expounds a plan, proposed by a member of Congress and said to have the endorsement of the President, by which aggressor nations would be brought to book through the institution of an economic boycott, this superseding the neutrality law. These items are related in more than their common reference to American foreign trade. The committee's report conceives a national danger lurking in remote waters, and advises the use of force—or at least a display of force —in order to counter the menace there. National in outlook, the report nevertheless assumes that the United States cannot be safely viewed as selfcontained, in spite of all that has been urged for this concept. Representative Scott's plan, "also dependent on the exercise of force — since no boycott can succeed without resort to means adopted in effective blockade —turns with equal definiteness away from the doctrine of isolation : its outlook is frankly international, so much so that it includes the calling of a conference of signatories of violated treaties, in order to promote wide co-operation in the economic pressure.

Thus the impracticability of treating the United States, even the Western Hemisphere, as a unit separable from the rest of the world has express acknowledgment. Geographical distance is seen to be no longer capable of conferring national, aloofness. The deception of physical, isolation is pierced. But neither the Senators' committee, long accustomed to deliver weighty pronouncements on naval policy, nor the Congressman understood to voices Mr. Roosevelt's wish to find a way out of the national difficulties attendant on the traditional theory of detachment, can hope to carry the whole country along the outward path. A robust policy of naval expansion, generally welcome as it is, has aroused a vocal suspicion that the Administration's purpose is to make it serve more than the defence of trade. Of late Mr. Roosevelt and his Secretary of State, Mr. Hull, have been trying to conduct an "educational campaign" in furtherance of their ideas of international co-operation. Mr. Hull's darling scheme has been the fostering of foreign trade, and its corollary of an increasing measure of political understanding among nations has not escaped the attention of his critics. They have admittedly been concerned about the perilous state of the world, and have had nothing to say against the oratorical reprimands issuing from White House against notorious disturbers of the peace—so long as these reprimands have been merely oratorical. They were inflamed by the Panay incident and applauded the insistence of the President that his sharp reproof should be conveyed to the Japanese Emperor. But they have clung to the hope that by "safe" methods, in keeping with the slogan "Stay at home and stay out of trouble," all requisite could be accomplished. When the idea of an American naval demonstration not far from the mid-Pacific was associated with manoeuvres proclaimed as routine exercises they raised objection. And they have had the great body of Amei'ican opinion with them in their castigation of moves in the direction of foreign entanglement. The Administration, it is true, has not been alone in its search for a formula harmonising national interests with international necessities. Mr. Stimson, Secretary of State in the banished Republican Cabinet, has been wholeheartedly and openly favourable to the broadened view of foreign policy. So have other eminent publicists, including responsible writers in important newspapers, who have repeatedly supported the utterances of Mr. Norman Davis, the President's ambassador-at-large. Yet so far, in Congress and in innumerable State assemblies, official and unofficial, the sentiment of isolation has been actively influential. It is manifest in the shifts by which many advocates of Mr. Hull's trade programme have endeavoured to square this with purely national expediency, and in the general run of arguments for a "big navy." The notion of international duty has been studiously kept in the background. This care, however, has been lightly honoured in Representative Scott's exposition of his plan. He has tried to magnify what are popularly known as "quarantine concepts," but has naively invited an onslaught of condemnation by announcing an international scheme indistinguishable from the League Covenant's clauses framed for the disciplining of aggressors. What will come from his bold venture cannot be foretold. It will be a wonder of wonders if it supplies even the beginning of a surer national touch on foreign affairs. "