AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23208, 30 November 1938, Page 12

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

Symptomatic of the widening realisation in the United States that, as the world grows smaller, it is becoming more and more impossible to insulate America from international electricity, is the plan reported from Washington to amend the Neutrality Act. The intention of this measure, passed only last year, was to prevent the President from taking sides in any conflict and American' trade and finance from becoming interested in the fortunes of a particular belligerent. The Act tied the hands of the President by binding him to a particular course of action so soon as he recognised a state of war existed. He was then compelled to declare an embargo on arms or loans to the belligerents and could exercise no discretion. In operation the Act might well penalise the innocent party more seriously than the aggressor, the Sino-Japanese conflict offering a case in point. Probably for that reason, and also because he would by implication brand Japan as the aggressor, Mr. Roosevelt has not yet recognised that a state of war exists in the Ear East and both Japan and China have aided and abetted the diplomatic fiction by avoiding a formal declaration. Neither wishes the American ban to operate. But the general effect of the Act has been to reduce Washington to a cipher in world affairs. While it is becoming clear that she cannot divorce herself from the march of events, the Act prevents her influencing them. The great, wealthy and' potentially powerful United States is thus reduced to virtual * impotence in a world given over to power politics. Some change is overdue if America is not to be caught in those "European entanglements" the more inextricably by her blindfold attempt to avoid them. Whether the reported amendment to the Act will improve matters will be hotly argued, but at least America is awakening to the fact that passivity is not a policy in face of active and determined dictatorships.