Reactions to Roosevelt

Only foreign state to approve U. S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Chicago speech so highly as to have it reprinted in pamphlet form and distributed on all fighting fronts to encourage the troops last week was the Valencia Government of Leftist Spain. In Madrid, where newspapers catering to the besieged populace usually carry little foreign news, Mr. Roosevelt was hailed in whole pages of heartfelt Spanish eulogy for having brought Washington out on the side of Valencia. Cried Madrid's Informaciones: "There is not a paragraph in -- President Roosevelt's speech which cannot be fully subscribed to by us without mental reservations or distinctions."

Coincides with Communism? Soviet newsorgans at first published the Chicago speech without comment. It took three days for the Communist hierarchy to make up their minds, but after that Mr. Roosevelt was hailed in Moscow as warmly as in Madrid. "These words mean recognition of the principle of the indivisibility of peace," declared Pravda ("Truth"), official organ of the Communist Party, "that is to say, the very principle for which the Soviet Union so stubbornly and consistently stood in its foreign policy."

"Soviet public opinion," said Izvestia ("News"), official organ of the Soviet Government, "cannot fail to remark in President Roosevelt's speech the number of views directly coinciding with the ideas for which Soviet diplomacy alone hitherto has fought consistently."

"Passionately." As head of the Popular Front Cabinet in France, Premier Camille Chautemps last week told the American Club of Paris in a fervent after-luncheon speech: "We have found with emotion and pride in the President's Chicago speech an echo of all the principles to which we are passionately attached! . . . We who are pacific must in these perilous times remain strong and united but we must also be conciliant and resolute. . . . We hope passionately that our appeals for peace, which are profoundly sincere, will be understood!"

Exclaimed Le Populaire, newsorgan of the French Socialist Party and Vice Premier Leon Blum who last year became the first Socialist Premier of France and is soon to visit the White House: "It is the conscience of the civilized world which has answered bestial ferocity." Without designating any particular country, his words are sufficiently explicit so that in them may be recognized condemnation of the invasion of Manchuria, the assassination of [Chancellor] Dollfuss [of Austria], the Italian aggression in Ethiopia, the foreign intervention in Spain, Japanese aggression in China, the bombardment of open cities and massacre of working populations, and piracy in the Mediterranean."

"Proud to be Americans!" Members of the Chinese Government, which clearly stood to gain most by the implications of President Roosevelt's new foreign policy, blandly expressed themselves as "much gratified" last week but unrestrained were the joyous whoops of U. S. citizens resident in China.

"If you boycott Japan," U. S. radio listeners were told by former Chinese Ambassador to the U. S. Dr. Alfred Sao-Ke Sze, broadcasting from Shanghai, "you will find you have contributed to the greatest single step of progress in history!"

Boycott Japan? In London last week New York Times Bureau Manager Ferdinand Kuhn Jr., after sounding out best contacts with His Majesty's Government, cabled: "An economic boycott of Japan appears at the moment to be ruled out, for the British Government will have none of it. Without in the least trying to minimize Mr. Roosevelt's speech, the British doubt that the President himself intended to encourage such a boycott when he spoke of a 'quarantine' of aggressor nations. The most that can be hoped for, in the British view, is another of those 'gestures' that have been made so often by this and other nations in the course of Japan's incursions into China."

In Whitehall, meanwhile, one of British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden's fashionable young men had invented a quip which was soon being drawled in the salons of Mayfair: "It seems the American President has delivered a new Sermon on the Mount--Mount Blank." Much too God-fearing to join in such British ruling class levity, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain at once took action to fill in what His Majesty's Government regarded as the most vital part of the Chicago speech-- its blanks. The British Embassy in Washington was instructed to ask exactly what the President wants to do, what he means by "quarantine" ("boycott"?) and other loose or unusual words in the Chicago speech.

While waiting for the White House to reply, Mr. and Mrs. Chamberlain, traveling incognito as "Mr. and Mrs. Ireland" to escape the curiosity of British crowds, journeyed to the annual Conservative Party Conference at Scarborough. There Government & Party Leader Chamberlain, in the course of delivering a speech which stressed British Rearmament and was wildly cheered, said: "Hitherto it has been assumed that the United States of America --the most powerful country in the world --would remain content with a frankly isolationist policy. But President Roosevelt has seen that if what he calls an epidemic of world lawlessness is allowed to spread no country will be safe from attack. . . .

"It would clearly be premature at this stage for me to commit this Government to any particular course of action."

Thus, by leaving the entire initiative up to warm Franklin Roosevelt, cold Neville Chamberlain did his best to give Japan. Germany and Italy an impression that Britain will not be to blame for whatever ultimate difficulty the new Washington policy may cause them. The Prime Minister went out of his way to add: "We were sincerely rejoiced that it was found possible to come to an agreement with the Italian Government as to the patrolling of the Mediterranean by French, Italian and British warships [TIME, Oct. 4]. If we could once make real progress in the settlement of the Spanish problem, the way would be open to those conversations which formed the subject of the recent correspondence between Signor Mussolini and myself."

For the United Kingdom it would be good "dollar diplomacy" to join an economic boycott of Japan sure to benefit Britain's depressed textile industry, now hamstrung by Japanese competition, but as the London Daily Express asked: "Are those demanding Sanctions against Japan prepared to go to war to enforce them?" Mr. Roosevelt can figure on trying to "quarantine" only Japan, but should Britain fall in with this she may find the logic of her League connections driving her to also "quarantine" Italy and perhaps every other nation which has intervened in Spain or sent its nationals to fight there.

As usual, therefore, the British Foreign Office thought last week in terms of both hemispheres and in terms of war and politics ahead of economics. Conservative Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain is none too pleased that the Chinese Government has now taken in the Chinese Communists and that envoys dash by chartered plane between Nanking and Moscow. Although President Roosevelt was offering the United Kingdom the chance of the century to extract the U. S. from isolation and team it up with Great Britain, this week Downing Street had its careful fingers crossed.

Fascist Triumvirate. In Japan, Germany and Italy prompt and angry reactions to the Chicago speech suggested that the President had gone a long way toward stinging these mutually friendly Fascist powers into a hard triumvirate. Probably prematurely, Japan's news agency Domei announced that at a call by the Italian Ambassador upon Japan's Foreign Office assurances were given of "Italy's sympathy and support in Japan's 'self-defense' campaign in China."

II Duce, after his grandiose reception by Der Fuehrer (TIME, Oct. 4, et seq.) was in an exalted mood last week. About the time the President was speaking in Chicago, the Dictator's Milan newsorgan Il Popolo d'ltalia was printing an editorial in which Mussolini hurled blanket defiance at "capitalism, parliamentary democracy, Communism, liberalism and a certain wavering Catholicism, with which we shall settle accounts in our own fashion some day or other, are against us!

"When we say that the Europe of tomorrow will be Fascist we base this on facts, and particularly on new states, not only European, which have linked themselves with those which initiated the movement of recovery. There is no doubt, for example, that Japan is liberating herself from the parliamentary miasma which she acquired a few decades ago, and which today arrests her vital elan. We fully understand and justify this elan. The squeals of spinsters and the sermons of archbishops make us laugh!"

This editorial had been swallowed by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain before he spoke at Scarborough, and Premier Mussolini followed it by sending to London and Paris a note in which he stated that Berlin would have to be invited to make a fourth at the parley on Spanish affairs which Britain and France had sought to have composed of only themselves and Italy. Italian and German editors suppressed or delayed printing the Chicago speech until they could bracket it with news of the enthusiasm of Madrid and Moscow and of how the U. S. State Department has licensed Soviet war purchases of over $10,000,000.

"Roosevelt announced the resumption of American co-operation in international affairs," typically commented the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, "and the first evidence of such co-operation is contributed in the deliveries of arms to the Soviet!"

Reasoned Reply. Japanese rightly felt they were the chief butt of what had been launched from Chicago. The Japanese Foreign Office specializes in reasoned replies, few of which ever seem reasonable to Occidentals, and its specialists cheerfully went to work last week. They always bear in mind that Japanese authorities in China always extract from Chinese officials who happen to be at their mercy treaties, pledges and written or oral agreements. This has been going on not merely for years but for generations, and usually not only the Japanese but also the Chinese refuse to divulge the texts. It was with reference to this enormous quantity of Oriental secret pledges, which the Occident regards as morally invalid because exacted under duress, that the Imperial Japanese Government last week issued the following urbane and reasoned 550 word official statement which would not deceive a Vermont woodchuck or a Georgia possum: "The present Sino-Japanese affair originated in an unwarranted attack by Chinese forces on Japanese garrison troops legitimately stationed in North China under rights clearly recognized by treaty. . . ."

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