Freedom of the Seas

A dozen signs pointed last week to the next step in U.S. foreign policy which the Administration was ready to take: to reassert the right of the U.S. to freedom of the seas.

That age-old right of a sovereign nation, for which the U.S. fought in 1812 and again in 1917, was virtually surrendered by the passage of the Neutrality Act in 1935--surrendered in an excess of idealism just as sweeping as that with which'Americans surrendered the right to drink when they passed the 18th Amendment. If now the Freedom of the Seas is reasserted it will be an event as striking as Repeal--the end of America's second Noble Experiment in one generation. Last week the effort to end it was already afoot: ^ Secretary Knox denounced the Neutrality Act. "I am a firm believer, like the President, in the traditional policy of the freedom of the seas. I have been yelling for repeal of the Neutrality Act ever since it became a law. . . . I have always regarded that Act as a terrible blunder."

P: Secretary Stimson denounced the Neutrality Act. "I have always considered it as a violation of our most sacred and important tradition of foreign policy--freedom of the seas. I have always prophesied it would bring us into trouble."

P: President Roosevelt in an open letter to Chairman Emory-Land of the Maritime Commission declared: "I know . . . that more and faster ships will be built, manned by trained American seamen, and that they will carry through the open waters of the seven seas implements that will help destroy the menace to free peoples everywhere. . . ."

In Congress the fight over the Neutrality Act, which keeps U.S. ships from exercising freedom of the seas, was already coming to a head. A poll of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee showed that 13 favored repeal, ten were opposed--the same division as in the vote on the Tobey convoy resolution, which would reassert Freedom of the Seas by force. (In one month's time, the Gallup Poll reported, sentiment in favor of convoys jumped from 41% to 52%.)

Senator Pepper suggested that the Neutrality Act could be repealed in the way that the Lend-Lease Act automatically repealed the Johnson Act. Senator Guffey spoke for convoys: "We face the alternative of convoying now or fighting later." Old Senator Norris urged the transfer of warships to Britain--"now, if we can turn the tide with it. . . ."

Neutrality Act repeal was just as live an issue to those who opposed it. Isolationist Senators were bitter--"If the President wants to convoy," said Senator Taft, "he will have to repeal the Act." Senator Wheeler said repeal would mean sending U.S. ships to the war zones, which would mean war, and "there is not the slightest chance that Congress will repeal the Neutrality Act at this time." In Manhattan, 22,000 filled Madison Square Garden to capacity to hear Charles Lindbergh, Senator Wheeler, Kathleen Norris, Norman Thomas, attack President Roosevelt's foreign policy, demand that the U.S. be kept out of war. They booed (in absentia} Knox, Stimson, Roosevelt, Willkie, Lord Halifax and the British Empire. They cheered a crowd of 50 carrying a sign "Copperheads of Westchester," two pretty young matrons with a sign announcing "No War Babies For Us." They turned loose their loudest applause as Lindbergh said: "We lack only a leadership that places America first--a leadership that tells us what it means and means what it says. Give us that and we will be the most powerful country in the world. . . ." They gave their idea of the salute to the flag (see cut), which unfortunately looked like the Fascist salute.

While the U.S. debated, Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, Chief of Staff of the German Navy, also spoke on Freedom of the Seas. He warned the U.S. that a convoy system would constitute an act of war.

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