Businessman

To many an observer, first U. S. debates about the war were as big a scandal as Teapot Dome. A dead-centre discussion in which debaters were alternately flogged as Get-inners and Stay-outers, it raged and enraged as long as the Neutrality Bill was being debated, permitted no talk of programs. Last week at the Academy of Political Science, Thomas Lament spoke to 1,000 members on war's effects on U. S. economy, made it clear that, whether or not U. S. citizens agreed or disagreed with his proposals, the Get-in-or-Stay-out-theory had had its day. Lamont points:

Business. The U. S. should stay out of the war, cooperate economically with Great Britain and France. "There is nothing that businessmen the world over fear and detest quite so much as war. ... I wish someone would run down the sources of the idea that businessmen are inclined to war. ... In recent years we have seen Japan's aggressions in Asia, and Italy's in Africa, and Hitler's. ... Is there anyone in his right mind who would suggest that these acts of violence . . . have been favored or promoted by business interests?"

Victory. "It is against the nature of things that the Fuhrer should be able to continue to overrun one sturdy and independent nation after another; declare it to be German whether it is or not, and expect it to remain a vassal State. . . . [British sea power] and France's wonderful army . . . [will] bring victory."

Peace. But what of the peace? There can be no world economic peace without U. S. cooperation, said Thomas Lamont. The U. S. role should be to keep out of war, contribute to the peace. The form of economic cooperation necessary to "establish peace, recovery and re-employment" he would not guess, mentioned an economic union of countries in Western Europe, of a United States of Europe, spoke of its "immensely stabilizing effect" upon the world. "It would be measurably the counterpart of the great free-trade area of our own United States. ... It would be creating a situation that tended strongly to remove at their very roots the causes of war."

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