Opening Gun

From the south portico of the White House, down Constitution Avenue and up Capitol Hill to the great grey home of Congress is a journey of 2.2 miles. One afternoon last week Franklin Roosevelt again journeyed to the Hill to address Congress in person. Ahead lay the imminent battle in Congress over U. S. Neutrality in which the President was about to fire the opening gun.

When war broke loose Franklin Roosevelt in the White House had tocsined the U. S. public to a feverish pitch. Then he permitted a week of domestic calm. Last week, before Congress met, he got on the bell-rope again. He upped the Coast Guard's personnel by 2,000, for coastal peace patrol. Undenied was a story that his State, War & Navy Departments had whacked up a precautionary war budget of $20,000,000,000 for a single year, $2,000,000,000 of it for further increases in the military forces, when & if necessary. The Gallup index to his personal popularity leaped from 56.6% in August to 61%--only 1.5% short of his re-election majority in 1936. Finally, in the oval office where maps graphed the death of Poland, he received six Republicans, nine Democrats, but no confirmed isolationists, to confer on national unity for Peace.

Just behind and to his left was Cordell Hull. In semicircle before him sat Vice President Garner, fresh from Texas; Speaker Bankhead of the House; "Dear Alben" Barkley and the President's actual captain in the Senate, Jimmy Byrnes; Republican Floor Leaders McNary (Senate) and Joe Martin (House); G. O. P.'s Alf Landon, and his 1936 running mate, flattered Frank Knox of Chicago. To them Franklin Roosevelt forecast a long and widening war, hammered home that the longer the war, the greater the danger to the U. S., hence the U. S. should try to shorten the war.

What he wanted was immediate, non-partisan action by Congress in special session to repeal the embargo on U. S. arms shipments to belligerents. The conferees agreed on non-partisan action for peace (but not, said Alf Landon afterward, to the point of forgoing partisan politics in 1940 and handing Franklin Roosevelt a third term). But they gave no committal whatsoever on the embargo. Franklin Roosevelt's biggest net gain was Jack Garner's potent support--at least for 30 days (see p. 13).

"Return to Law." Next day, and the day of Franklin Roosevelt's trip to the Capitol, was his mother's 85th birthday. "I don't think my son has the slightest wish [for a third term]," said she at Hyde Park. Her son in Washington was guarded almost as though the U. S. were at war. Ringing him, barricading the approaches to the House chamber where he was to speak, were 150 Washington police, extra Secret Service details, 150 Capitol guards. They policed even the press galleries, stopped Attorney General Frank Murphy when he brushed past. Conspicuously absent from the attending Senators was Idaho's Isolationist Borah. Absent from the crowded diplomatic gallery were the representatives of Germany, Italy, Japan. Conspicuously present on the floor was a captain of the willful opposition, Michigan's Vandenberg, who never turned his eyes from Franklin Roosevelt.

Never had his listeners heard Franklin Roosevelt in mood so grave, never had the cameras recorded deeper lines in his face. He smiled only once.* And never had he discussed war & peace in terms so plainly respectful of the U. S. will for peace. Only by quotation from his message to Congress at its opening last January did he hint his enmity for Hitler & Co., his concern for the warring democracies.

In his one suggestion that the embargo hurts Great Britain and France, helps Germany--and that repeal would turn the tables--he named no names. He reminded Congress that embargo deprives naval powers of a natural advantage over land powers.

That Franklin Roosevelt would like to get shut of nearly all the Neutrality Act of 1937, Congress knew. He specifically recommended that two provisions (regulating the collection of funds for belligerents, requiring arms exports to be licensed) be retained. Subtly, but without much hope, he suggested that Congress could scrap the rest while leaving him ample executive power to keep U. S. shipping and travelers out of danger zones, require belligerent buyers of all goods to take title before shipments leave the U. S., prevent war credits to belligerents. "The result," said he, ". . . will be to require all purchases to be made in cash, and cargoes to be carried in the purchasers' own ships at the purchasers' own risk."

Remiss indeed were Vandenberg & friends if they failed to note this lone overstatement in a speech notable for its restraint. Strict cash & carry would result from Franklin Roosevelt's procedure only if his Administration insisted upon it. Existing restrictions on loans to defaulting war debtors do not apply to private buyers, who legally could "take title" without paying cash.

Franklin Roosevelt smoothly recommended a short debate, an early adjournment. In the interim, until its regular session opens next January 1, he would consult its leaders irrespective of party, if need be, would call another special session. The keynote of his appeal to the mixed peace emotions (see col. 3) of the public and of Congress was his declaration:

". . . I conceive that regardless of party or section the mantle of peace and of patriotism is wide enough to cover us all. Let no group assume the exclusive label of the peace 'bloc.' We all belong to it."

To the extraordinary session he also said: "Our acts must be guided by one single hardheaded thought--keeping America out of this war!"

> "One of the results of the policy of embargo and non-intercourse [during the Napoleonic Wars] was the burning in 1814 of part of this Capitol in which we are assembled. Our next deviation by statute from the sound principles of neutrality and peace through international law . . . was the so-called Neutrality Act. ... I regret that the Congress passed that Act. I regret equally that I signed that Act."

> ". . . What is the advantage to us in sending all manner of articles across the ocean for final processing there, when we could give employment to thousands by doing it here? ... By such employment we automatically aid our own national defense."

> "[When the Neutrality Act was first passed] there would have been no difference between the export of cotton and the export of gun cotton. Today there is. Before 1935 there would have been no difference between the shipment of brass tubing in piece form and brass tubing in shell form. Today there is."

> " . . . A belligerent nation often needs wheat and lard and cotton . . . just as much as it needs anti-aircraft guns. . . . . . . Let those who seek to retain the present embargo be wholly consistent and seek new legislation to cut off cloth and copper and meat and wheat and a thousand other articles from all of the nations at war."

> "To those who say that this program would involve a step toward war on our part, I reply that it ... is a positive program for giving safety . . . the road to peace."

Franklin Roosevelt's conclusion seemed a thunder-stealing echo of Isolationist Charles Lindbergh, who last fortnight begged the U. S. to make itself a citadel of democracy. Said the President: "Fate seems now to compel us to ... maintain in the western world a citadel wherein . . . civilization may be kept alive."

Noses Submerged. "About what was expected," said a spokesman for Adolf Hitler, who expects no good of Franklin Roosevelt. The British press, dashed by the President's expressed aversion to all wars, including their present one, told their readers not to be impatient. Mr. Roosevelt and Secretary Steve Early announced that overnight telegrams exceeded the response to any of the President's recent speeches. Implication: that the flood of anti-repeal letters and wires to Congress did not tell the whole story.

Reporters at press conference next day found that the President had gone from hot-weather shirt sleeves into a grey suitcoat, seemingly new. Not new, said he: the suit was at least a year old. Whereupon he peeked at a label, amazedly announced that the suit was bought in 1936. Then he amazed the correspondents. He announced, as a matter of public information, that two foreign submarines had been sighted in U. S. waters. One was off the boundary point of Alaska and Canada, the other somewhere off Boston, midway between Nova Scotia and Nantucket.

What nationality? Maybe they were Swiss, Afghan or Bolivian, chortled the President, who presumably was aware that Canada has no submarines. Franklin Roosevelt then told his questioners not to get too nosey, left them to guess: 1) Why he could not say flatly that the sub marines were German, or 2) Why, if he lacked positive information, he said anything.*

At week's end a reporter showed Franklin Roosevelt Alf Landon's statement proposing that he renounce a third term in the interests of national unity. The President smilingly declined to comment.

*When, in the phrase, "When and if repeal of the embargo is accomplished," he interpolated: ''And I'd'rather say 'when than if.' " *German submarines can cruise about 3,000 miles, by proclamation of Franklin Roosevelt have the right to be peacefully present in neutral U. S. waters, refuel at U. S. ports, go peacefully home. Germany's famed Deutschland in World War I twice dodged the British and crossed to the U. S. Its U-53 put up at Newport, R. I. just before it sank six foreign merchantmen off Nantucket.

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