AID IF THREATENED

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23121, 20 August 1938, Page 15

AID IF THREATENED

PROMISE TO CANADA UNITED STATES ACTION MR. ROOSEVELT'S SPEECH VALUE OF FRIENDSHIP By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright (Received August JO, 10.0 p.m.) NEW YORK, August IS "I give you my assurance that the people of the United States will not stand idly by if the domination of Canadian soil is threatened by any other Empire," said President Roosevelt while receiving a degree from the Queen's University, says a message from Kingston, Ontario. President Roosevelt proposed that Canada and tho United States should co-operate in developing the St. Lawrence waterway. He reiterated the value of friendship between the two nations. The people of the United States and Canada were friends owing to the frankness governing their relations.

Commenting on the President's speech the New York Herald Tribune says: "There is not anything very surprising in Mr. Roosevelt's expansion of the Monroe Doctrine to include the defence of Canada. For many years nobody lias imagined that the United States could remain indifferent to any threat against Canadian soil, and if tho scope of the doctrine has been enlarged it is only in a technical sense.

"Yet tlie President has given calculated portcntiousncss to his announcement by timing it at a tense moment in international affairs. Apparently the President and tho Secretary of State, Mr. Cordell Hull, are trying to exert the influence of the United States in Europe without pledging its strength. Apparently they aro trying to preserve peace by hinted threats of war without committing their own people. Mr. Roosevelt, and Mr. Hull may feel that their utterances arc safely within the, limits of neutrality but foreign commentators, who in London and Paris have received his speech with enthusiasm, and in Berlin and Rome with anger, are under 110 such fragile illusions."