Senators in Distress

Morris Sheppard of Texas, the gentle, whitehaired father of the late Prohibition experiment and diligent overseer of Senatorial campaign morality, last week went to the White House in his capacity as Chairman of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs. News that President Roosevelt had secretly aided France in purchasing U. S. airplanes, revealed accidentally by the crash of a new Douglas bomber in California (TIME, Feb. 6), had upset and excited Military Affairs.* In the White House, President Roosevelt began to lecture Chairman Sheppard on his reasons for helping France, using background facts and confidential reports so arresting that Chairman Sheppard presently told the President he really thought the whole Military Affairs Committee should hear this lecture. Mr. Roosevelt agreed, and presently the committee, 17 strong, were closeted with the U. S. Commander in Chief at the White House.

When the Senators emerged after more than an hour, the Isolationists among them --North Dakota's Nye, Missouri's Clark, North Carolina's Reynolds--were fuming. The President had bound them to "secrecy" and that, said Senator Nye, "when there is so much that ought to be said, is something more than distressing."

Secrecy, Franklin Roosevelt well knows, lasts about five minutes in Washington--particularly if 17 Senators are involved. Newspapers the world over soon headlined that Franklin Roosevelt had placed the U. S. "frontier" or "first line of defense" in France. As Chief Executive he had laid down for the Senators a foreign policy aligning the U. S. more strongly than ever behind France and England. As Commander in Chief he had declared his determination to back those democracies for defensive war by every means short of actual manpower.

Basic question the U. S. press immediately asked was: had this Democratic President made any commitments comparable to the moral ones assumed by the last Democratic President with regard to "foreign entanglements"? To his full height in the Senate rose young Henry Cabot Lodge, grandson and namesake of one of the men who drove Woodrow Wilson wild on the League of Nations issue, to ask the Secretary of the Treasury for a full accounting of the $2,000,000,000 Stabilization Fund, to see if any financial commitments were implied by the President's program. Senator Lodge's move was followed by a declaration from Senator Gerald ("Neutrality") Nye, who announced: "I ... give notice of withdrawal from all executive [secret] committee meetings of the Military Affairs Committee . . . until such time as ... the record, devoid of any military secrets . . . shall be available to the people."

Worse for Franklin Roosevelt than even the headlines in U. S. newspapers about his "new" foreign commitments was a speech in Chicago by the G.O. P.'s one living ex-President, Herbert Hoover. Said he: ". . . We are deluged with talk of war. . . . Amid these agitations President Roosevelt has now announced a new departure in foreign policies. . . . Our foreign policies in these major dimensions must be determined by the American people and the Congress, not by the President alone."

Mr. Hoover went on heavily about the dangers of overcommitment by Mr. Roosevelt. But Mr. Hoover slipped out of political character when he admitted the "one condition under which the American people . . . might join in a European war" -- to wit, in case women & children were air-bombed abroad, when "the American people could not be restrained from action."

Two days later Franklin Roosevelt replied to the Senate, the U. S. press, Herbert Hoover, et al. With tame Chairman Key Pittman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee sitting in ("to report to the Senate"), Franklin Roosevelt handed out to his press conference a sharp rebuke to U. S. publishers (and foreign commentators) who, he said, had wilfully misconstrued his "secret" statements to Chairman Sheppard's committee. He described as "a deliberate lie" the published statement that he had placed the U. S. frontier or first line of defense on the Rhine or in France. He described as "a boob" any one (presumably a Military Affairs Senator) who had reported any such thing and asked him to step forward and reveal himself. He enunciated a "simple" U. S. foreign policy.

"No. 1: We are against any entangling alliances, obviously.

"No. 2: We are in favor of the maintenance of world trade for everybody -- all nations -- including ourselves.

"No. 3: We are in complete sympathy -with any and every effort made to reduce or limit armaments.

"No. 4: As a nation -- as American people -- we are sympathetic with the peaceful maintenance of political, economic and social independence of all nations in the world."

Significance. Thus were two issues joined, one old, one new. The old one was that of Franklin Roosevelt's ingenuousness. Having fumbled his press on a big question (perhaps the biggest current one), he had accused others of misrepresentation. The new issue was: did the Chief Executive and Commander in Chief of the U. S. stand behind the democracies or not? If he did, was he trying to be secretive about it? In either case, plain fact was that the immemorial battle was on again between the Chief Executive, whose duty it is to shape foreign policy for ratification. and the Senior House of the Congress, whose duty it is to ratify for the Sovereign People the foreign commitments of the Executive, and, with the Junior House, to declare war.

History. In 1919, the "secrecy" of their framing was the charge with which Senators Philander Knox and Henry Cabot Lodge I started the depopularizing of Woodrow Wilson's Treaty of Versailles and League of Nations Covenant before they reached the Senate. No charge could have been more unjust or illegal.* Yet this week, as the Senate geared itself for high-powered, full-dress debate on Franklin Roosevelt's foreign policy, "secrecy" faced Franklin Roosevelt as a charge and an issue likely to impede his National Defense program and other important legislation. No such giants of debate as Woodrow Wilson faced loomed against him. Instead of Henry Cabot Lodge I, Philander Knox and Missouri's irreconcilable, tigerish Jim Reed, the 1939 President faced only relatively mild characters like Missouri's Bennett Clark, North Dakota's Nye, North Carolina's clownish Reynolds (see p. 16), and Henry Cabot Lodge II, bright but time-abiding. The great Isolationists of yore, Idaho's Borah and California's Johnson, were still on the scene (although Borah had grippe last week) but neither of these packs the punch with today's Senators that he did with yesterday's. Yet to defend the most adventurous President since Wilson, the only major figures in sight were Senators even more moribund or inept: old Lewis of Illinois, heavy Barkley of Kentucky, thick-tongued Pittman of Nevada, bumbling McKellar of Tennessee.

*Last week Great Britain added 250 warplanes (50 reconnaissance, 200 trainers) to her U. S. orders for 400.

*Since no treaty is the U. S. Senate's business before a President presents it.

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