The Strategists

At the White House the President conferred daily with Secretary of State Cordell Hull. Subject: whether to kill completely or merely dismember the Neutrality Act.

Up on Capitol Hill the opposition conferred. Unnoted by the press, General Robert Elkington Wood, kingpin of America First, slipped into town. The bulky General moved boldly into the Capitol itself, into the private office of Montana's Isolationist Senator Burton K. Wheeler, in the Senate's Interstate Commerce Committee room.

Wood, accompanied by Sam Pettengill, former Indiana Congressman and a rabid Roosevelt-hater, took over Wheeler's office as headquarters for a lobby against the impending Neutrality amendments. (The last private citizen who invaded a Congressional office to bore at legislation from within was John L. Lewis: he moved into Speaker Bankhead's office during a fight on amendments on the Walsh-Healey Act. When Congressmen found out about it, they raised the roof. If anyone has tried it since, he has kept it dark.) First plan had been to hold a big lunch in the House restaurant. But most isolationist Congressmen who were invited preferred a free tour of Fort Belvoir, Va., where the Army planned to let the Congressmen have a field day of fingering guns, swinging on ropes, inspecting the camp, and eating in the regular mess (with tablecloths, however). So the lunch was called off.

Wood and Pettengill began placing calls, rounding up the anti-Administration members. Some sincere isolationists refused to attend. Among the Senators who came were balding, sobersided Robert Taft of Ohio, red-faced Bennett Champ Clark of Missouri. (Wheeler was out of town, speechmaking.)

Wood was told that both Chambers would easily pass an amendment permitting the arming of merchant ships; that an amendment to permit U.S. ships to enter so-called combat zones would be hard-fought; that isolationist mail had slumped since the President's "shoot-on-sight" speech; that Congressional isolationists were climbing on the Administration bandwagon. The strategists decided to revert to the old tactic of stirring up the letter writers of the U.S., to flood the mails and wires with threats and complaints to Congress and the President.

As Wood withdrew to digest his reports, the President called a White House conference of members from both parties. To them he would put his ideas, weigh their opinions and objections. The decision called for all the statesmanship he possessed. He could risk everything now on one smashing fight to repeal the entire act--which his advisers held would be an enormous boost to the morale of all the world. Or he could move as he has been moving, step by step, whittling the act's barriers away one by one. The first choice would involve great risks. Even defeat was possible. The second choice would mean a shorter step, with victory almost certain.

Events still might make the choice unnecessary. From Rio de Janeiro came a radio flash: the I. C. White, 7,052-ton American-owned Panama-registered tanker, had been torpedoed and sunk on Sept. 27 in the South Atlantic, with a loss of four of her 38 men. This was the eighth U.S.-owned ship sunk in World War II.

In the face of such losses, Washington's slogan had become: "Deliver the Goods!" But to insure their delivery, the Neutrality Act must be amended. One day soon, a U.S. warship would sink a German raider. Then repeal of the Neutrality Act might give Franklin Roosevelt no trouble whatever.

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