Action

Last week the tempo of life in the U. S. was stepped up. In all fields except Congress, where the draft was still debated, there was action and lots of it--political, diplomatic, military. There was action in Elwood, Ind., where Wendell Willkie accepted the Republican nomination for President. There was action in Washington. Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace resigned to campaign for the Vice-Presidency. There were resignations, new appointments. And there was the action of President Roosevelt, who announced at his press conference that he had sent observers to watch the Nazi attack on Great Britain, and that conversations were under way with the British Government on the subject of the transfer of naval and air bases in the Western Hemisphere for U. S. defense, especially defense of the Panama Canal. And that the U. S. was discussing defense of the Western Hemisphere with Canada.

That was enough news for a normal week. But President Roosevelt had a far bigger sensation to pull out of his hat before the week was over. Rocking back in his desk chair, his big mole-speckled hands riding the chair arms, pleased at the hot-flash reception of his news, he also let it be known that he would look over Army maneuvers at Ogdensburg, N. Y., and the word went north from the White House that there was to be no salute of guns, no bands, no reviewing of troops for the President. All that he wanted was to ride through that historic countryside, scene of so many national humiliations in the War of 1812, on the off-chance of seeing some division theoretically invading the U. S. theoretically wiped out by defenders.

In the brilliant sunshine, broken occasionally by fleecy clouds, beside the sparkling blue streams that wound beside the road, against the dark and light greens of the north country foliage, the President looked over the 94,000 officers and men of the First Army of the U. S. The Army paid no mind to his request about saluting. Eight times in the six-hour ride through St. Lawrence County's rolling country the long Presidential motorcade pulled up in front of stiffly assembled Army divisions. Eight times the President heard the 21-gun salute followed by ruffles and flourishes; eight times he sat at attention for the national anthem while Old Glory whipped the breeze above regimental colors dipped in salute. With Secretary of War Stimson and Governor Lehman beside him, with General Drum riding in the jump seat, the President looked on at a great show of man power.

It was not so good a show for war machines. The President saw five anti-aircraft guns, about 40 World War I 155 mm. howitzers mounted on more modern carriages, a larger number of 75 mm. guns, a few more than a hundred aircraft. There were no automatic rifles in sight, nor a single anti-tank gun. They were not needed. There were no tanks. The President asked Major General Clifford Powell about the equipment of the 44th Division. The Major General replied : "It is pretty good, what there is of it. But we are using broomsticks for machine guns and rain pipes for mortars." The President laughed and said that everyone seemed to be in the same boat.

Canada. President Roosevelt's biggest news was still to come. He held a brief press conference. He answered questions readily. Someone asked him about Candidate Willkie's challenge to meet him face to face in public. Over the Roosevelt face came a can't-you-see-I'm-busy look, but the President only said that he had been too occupied with the Army all day to have noticed Mr. Willkie's remarks.

Then the President moved on to Ogdensburg to meet his old friend William Lyon Mackenzie King, Prime Minister of Canada. They met in the railway car Roald Amundsen in the Rome Yard track at Ogdensburg, while the sun beat down unmercifully outside. Only Secretary of War Stimson witnessed the meeting. Outside laborers stuffed huge hunks of ice into the car's air-conditioning system. A few grizzled chickens grubbed aimlessly among the weeds that all but concealed the adjoining tracks. A group of truck drivers idled about the foot of a monument that marks the site of Fort La Presentation, built by the French in 1749 for the protection of its mission among the Indians of the Five Nations.

But 50 National Guardsmen patrolled the area with fixed bayonets. An Army patrol boat stood watch a stone's throw out in the St. Lawrence River. And Hawk-eyed, lanky Ed Starling, chief of the White House secret service detail, soon had the Presidential special hauled out of the ingrown Ogdensburg Yards--the day before he had spotted two huge gasoline storage tanks between the train and the river. It was pulled to a safe, secluded, heavily guarded siding at Heuvelton, N. Y., where there were neither tanks nor moving railway traffic.

The two men talked far into the night. Prime Minister King slept in a Pullman bed in the compartment next to the President's, accompanied him to an Episcopal field service the next morning. At noon they issued a joint statement:

"The Prime Minister and the President have discussed the mutual problems of defense in relation to the safety of Canada and the United States.

"It has been agreed that a Permanent Joint Board on Defense shall be set up at once by the two countries. This Permanent Joint Board on Defense shall commence immediate studies relating to sea, land and air problems including personnel and material. It will consider in the broad sense the defense of the north half of the Western Hemisphere.

"The Permanent Joint Board of Defense will consist of four or five members from each country, most of them from the services. It will meet shortly."

Agreement. Thus the U. S. was linked for defense in informal agreement but not by pact with Canada. It was a logical culmination of the policy expressed by the President at Kingston, Ontario, two years ago: "The people of the United States will not stand idly by if domination of Canadian soil is threatened by any other empire." It was an inclusion of Canada within the scope of the Monroe Doctrine, especially as the doctrine was broadened to include military agreements at the Havana Conference. The U. S. had set up a defense board with a country at war. Whether that fact meant that President Roosevelt viewed the fall of Britain as an imminent possibility, no one could say. There was no question that he was determined upon speedy action. Back in his study in Hyde Park, he called the State, War and Navy Departments to make it plain that he wanted the Permanent Canadian-United States Joint Defense Board set up and functioning this week.

Last week the President also:

> Appointed Nelson Rockefeller, long interested in Latin-American relations, as chairman of the interDepartmental Committee on Inter-American Affairs.

> Accepted the resignation of Edward Noble, Under Secretary of Commerce and organizer of the Civil Aeronautics Authority, and said: "In the event you find yourself with . . . free time on hand after November I trust you will let me know. . . ."A candidate for Senator in Connecticut this fall, Republican Edward Noble also came out for Willkie.

> Praised the effort of David Lasser (who resigned as president of the Workers Alliance, charging that Communists had control of it) to form a "100 per cent American movement of the unemployed. . . ."

> Talked long with former Assistant Secretary of War Louis Johnson, who refused a post as one of the President's administrative assistants when he stepped down from the War Department. Louis Johnson said that he had been offered a new defense job, was taking a week to think it over.

> Dodged a question about the release of World War destroyers to Britain, when reporters asked him if their release was linked to the acquisition of British naval and air bases in the Western Hemisphere, by repeating that destroyers were not part of the story.

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