"You Shall Go No Further"

Down at the bottom of the sea lay the merchantmen Robin Moor (May 21); the Sessa*; (Aug. 17); the Steel Seafarer (Sept. 7); the Montana*; (Sept. 11).

Damaged at a pier in Suez lay the Arkansan (Sept. 11). Unscathed, somewhere in the Atlantic, was the U.S. destroyer Greer, which a Nazi submarine had tried several times, unsuccessfully, to torpedo.

Against this background the President last week addressed the world. In a light grey seersucker suit, a mourning-armband for his mother on his sleeve, the President spoke in a low, grave tone, without histrionics, with little dramatic emphasis. But his words were hammer blows.

He began by clearly, carefully outlining the Greer incident: the Greer was unmistakably a U.S. ship, was attacked by the Nazi submarine in waters declared by the U.S. to be "waters of self-defense." The at tack, he said, was either a deliberate Nazi attempt to sink a U.S. warship, or "even more outrageous," an attack from undersea on an unidentified surface boat, indicating a policy of indiscriminate, unrestricted submarine warfare. Said the President: "This was piracy." But this attack and the other attacks were, he continued, part of a pattern, a Nazi design to abolish freedom of the seas in order to control and dominate the world. He mentioned other Nazi plots*; Of Panama registry though all four were U.S.-owned. in Uruguay, Argentina, Colombia, Bolivia --aimed at the same goal.

The time had now come to tell the Nazi Government: "You shall go no further." He then pledged, with all solemnity: "No act of violence, no act of intimidation will keep us from maintaining intact two bulwarks of defense: First, our line of supply of materiel to the enemies of Hitler, and second, the freedom of our shipping on the high seas." The U.S. will do this, he said, "No matter what it takes, no matter what it costs.

. . ." He added: "When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him." He cited precedents: Presidents John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, each of whom had ordered the U.S. Navy to stamp out piracy. This act, said he, "is no act of war on our part ... is solely defense." Then he came to the reason for the speech: "But let this warning be clear.

From now on, if German or Italian vessels of war enter the waters the protection of which is necessary for American defense, they do so at their own peril. The orders which I have given as Commander in Chief of the United States Army and Navy are to carry out that policy--at once." He promised that in defense waters the Navy would convoy ships of any flag choosing to join such convoys.

"Plain English." Next morning the New York Daily News put the President's speech with absolute succinctness: SHOOT, F.D.R. TELLS NAVY. Day before, Press Secretary Stephen Early had told reporters the speech would answer all questions.

It would be made in English--"English that will not need translation." The German Government understood the President's speech. So did the U.S.

Navy.

On Capitol Hill reaction was exactly on the usual lines: the ostriches, the war hawks, the mugwumps. The U.S. press gave almost unanimous praise for the speech and agreement with its objective.

Only major dissenters were the newspapers published by the Isolationist "Three Furies": Joe Patterson's New York Daily News, Sister Eleanor Patterson's Washington Times-Herald, Cousin Robert R. McCormick's Chicago Tribune.

In the Atlantic some 300 U.S. warships of all sizes awaited Hitler's answer. One answer had already been made: into English ports limped two convoys of Lend-Lease ships. At least eight of the first convoy had been sunk in fierce battles with Nazi submarines and four-engined bomb ers (see p. 20}.

The U.S. watched the White House.

For the eighth time in its history, for the second time this century, the U.S. was at war -- an undeclared war. Such a war was the 1798 naval war with France, when the 55-ship U.S. Navy captured 85 French privateers and the French captured one U.S. naval vessel and about 100 merchant men before the action petered out and peace was signed in 1800. Undeclared also were the Barbary Wars of 1801-05 and 1815, in which the U.S. Navy was twice ordered to clean out Barbary corsairs, who levied taxes for free passage through the Mediterranean. But this new U.S. war on "piracy" was of a greater scale.

Soon in this new undeclared war a U.S. warship may sink or capture a Nazi sea or surface raider. And soon, if more U.S. merchantmen are sunk, the President must ask that merchant ships be armed. The Neutrality Act now forbids their carrying any arms beyond officers' pistols, but at the White House this week the President discussed with his Congressional advisers the advisability of asking Congress for a repeal of this section of the Act. Although no decisions were reached, this conference foreshadowed events to come. Eventually the Neutrality Act must be whittled down to the size of U.S. neutrality, something which the President in effect has now declared to be nonexistent.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.