Peace Passion Cold

When Congress assembled last month, the No. 1 probability on its calendar was that a peace-passionate House & Senate would promptly pass a permanent neutrality act. Last week peaceful Congressmen saw that their choice was between international peace and political peace. Since most of them preferred the latter, the chances for a new neutrality law had, in six weeks, faded almost to the political vanishing point.

On the last day of February 1936, the temporary Neutrality Act forbidding export of arms to belligerents expires. The permanent law, forbidding the export not only of arms but of war materials beyond normal peacetime requirement, had a glittering prospectus. It was to provide the U. S. with the twin blessings of peace and isolation. But three aspects of the resolution served to cool Congressional enthusiasm. One was the realization that, in case of a European war, U. S. agriculture and industry would take a sound beating. Another was the outcry of peace-lovers that the bill might promise isolation but it did not promise peace, since it would force foreign nations fearful of war to redouble their preparations. A third unpleasant suggestion was that, since the measure would, in effect, "legislate a depression," it would thus lead to the formation of a "war party" in U. S. politics. From a practical viewpoint, however, the most serious objection to the bill was that it had Senator Hiram Johnson against it. For a generation California's Johnson has failed to reach the highest places of U. S. politics. In 1912 he ran for Vice President on the Bull Moose ticket with Theodore Roosevelt, and lost out. In 1920 he refused to run for Vice President on the Republican ticket, with the result that Calvin Coolidge moved into the White House in 1923. Nevertheless since 1917, when he entered the Senate, Hiram Johnson has waved his arms, tossed his grey head, thundered his passionate opinions in such a way as to abort most of the things he has been against. In the campaign of 1916 it was Republican Nominee Charles Evans Hughes who affronted Mr. Johnson and was thus stopped in California. In 1919 it was Woodrow Wilson's League of Nations' Covenant which affronted Senator Johnson's sense of isolation. It did not pass the U. S. Senate. In 1935 it was Franklin Roosevelt's World Court proposal which Senator Johnson halted dead in its Senate tracks (TIME, Feb.11, 1935). In 1936 it is permanent neutrality legislation against which Senator Johnson has sternly set his face. To the charge that the measure might mean isolation but not peace, he retorted that it might mean peace but not isolation, for which Hiram Johnson has fought his hardest Senate fights. He saw, and Senator Borah saw, that if England and other members of the League resorted to arms against another nation, the U. S. would, in effect become their passive ally, because, under a neutrality law which virtually abandoned freedom of the seas, the U. S. would not only acquiesce in any embargoes the League established by force, but would limit supplies to League opponents even without the enforcement of an armed embargo. Senator Johnson went to work in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. First he got a provision inserted in the bill specifically declaring that the U. S. did not surrender any of its rights in international law-- i. e., freedom of the seas. Then he called Professor Edwin M. Borchard of Yale and John Bassett Moore, onetime Justice of the World Court, to tell the Committee that the neutrality resolution was more likely to beget war than peace. Although Judge Moore's testimony was given in secret session, Senator Johnson handed it over to the Press. Every Senator knew that Hiram Johnson was once more on the warpath. That meant the kind of long and bitter war which those who love political peace in an election year were most anxious to avoid. Thus last week, with Secretary of State Hull's acquiescence, Chairman Pittman of the Foreign Relations Committee announced that by unanimous vote the Committee would drop the proposed permanent neutrality resolution and propose a 14-month extension of the temporary Neutrality Act, with a few minor amendments. Senator Johnson triumphantly trumpeted:

"The good judgment of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate has probably saved this country from a most tragic mistake. The so-called neutrality bill so enthusiastically urged by many good but mistaken people, and by some who are neither good nor mistaken, would much more likely have involved us in war than kept us out of it."

Taking their cue from the Senate, Democratic leaders of the House promptly put the resolution to extend the temporary neutrality law to a vote, passed it 353-to-27.

Before the resolution came up in the Senate next day, peace-lovers, led by Senators Nye, Clark and Costigan, announced they would propose a series of amendments. Three amendments were offered, defeated. Senator Nye flew from Cleveland to Washington to argue for permanent neutrality legislation but arrived only in time to see the temporary act swiftly passed without a record vote.

Considerably upset were these peace-lovers when Walter Millis, author of Road to War, text book of the Peace Bloc (TIME, Jan. 20), declared in a Scripps-Howard interview: "Extension of last year's arms embargo is about as far as we can proceed safely with a neutrality program at present. ... We must not forget that legislation may work in a quite unforeseeable fashion when an actual war arises. ... No man can say categorically how any neutrality program would function in the face of a real crisis such as a serious outbreak in Europe. . . ."

"Millis," cried Senator Clark, "seems only able to read the record of the War years. He apparently draws no lesson from it."

"It was upon what this man exposed so well in his book," mourned Washington's Senator Bone, "that I postulated my stand for a strong, mandatory neutrality bill. The lamp of experience burns so brightly in his hands that we are convinced by his recitation of the record. That record can lead to only one conclusion, and that conclusion is what we tried to put into the Clark-Nye neutrality bills.

"His book should convince the most stubborn mind, but apparently it has not convinced him. In his interview he seems to be trying to unconvince those of us who have our minds made up."

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