Peace & Preparedness

The ethos or collective disposition of the U. S. people is dead set against foreign alliances. The fatal smell of 1917 is still too heavy in the air. On the other hand, the U. S. people will buy almost anything --from a piece of the power business to the world's biggest breadline--and 74% of the citizens canvassed in a recent Gallup poll were eager to buy a big navy, the kind of Big Navy that Franklin Roosevelt asked Congress for two weeks ago.

Mr. Roosevelt said he wanted more Navy "specifically and solely because of the piling up of additional land and sea armaments in other countries, in such manner as to involve a threat to world peace and security." But Mr. Roosevelt has also said that the peace of the world depends on the co-operation of the world's democracies--i.e., the U. S., England and France. In 1916, the last time so many-nations were at war, Thomas Woodrow Wilson began with a policy of Peace and Preparedness, then took to playing ball with the British and ended up by saving the world for Democracy at a total cost to the U. S. of 126,000 lives and $40,000,000,000. If that was the tragic gamut Mr. Roosevelt was about to embark on, last week the U. S. Senate and House of Representatives wanted to know about it. In the Senate the President's mouthpiece answered categorically NO! Before a House committee the answer sounded for a while like maybe. This week Secretary of State Cordell Hull said NO.

No. In the midst of a Senate squabble on the Housing Bill, Nevada's spare Key Pittman, Chairman of the Foreign Relations committee, rose to answer the charge made day before by California's Hiram Johnson, a fellow committeeman, that the U. S. "had no foreign policy." Mr. Johnson advanced the theory that the State Department's protestations of peace were at odds with the President's threat of "quarantining" aggressor nations. In his Chief's defense, Senator Pittman declared: "When the President of the U. S. first entered office he announced what I consider the fundamental foreign policy of our Government--non-interference and non-intervention in the affairs of other governments. I know of no instance so far of that policy being violated."

Hiram Johnson is the Senate's Great Isolationist. William Borah is its Great Conversationalist. He had heard of Anthony Eden's pregnant preference to "say nothing" when asked in the House of Commons if Britain and the U. S. were acting in concert after the Ladybird and Panay bombings. He had been even more abashed when the late U. S. Ambassador to Great Britain, Robert W. Bingham, had assured a British audience: "If dictatorships are better prepared to begin war, democracies are better able to finish it. Despots have forced America & Britain to undertake rearmament, & having undertaken it, we must necessarily win the rearmament race."

"Such statements," thundered Bill Borah, a Foreign Relations Chairman himself in the good old Republican days, "inevitably cause the other nations of the world to understand that we have a foreign policy based upon a particular relationship with the British Nation, and when they look about and see that we are building a Navy the like of which has never been known in time of peace, they reach but one conclusion. . . . The world has practically gone mad over the proposition that these powerful nations are building for a specific purpose. . . .

"All these things cannot be whistled down the wind. . . . They are the very things that brought on the World War; one nation putting forth its program, and another nation putting forth a program to meet that program, and very soon we are in the midst of war by reason of these misunderstandings."

To these portentous implications, Mr. Pittman stood firm on his original thesis: "We have not entered into any combination with any foreign country looking to any kind of defense of this country, any kind of defense of any other country or any military aid to any other country. There is no act of any authoritative officer of our Government indicating such action. . . ."

Maybe. Meantime, in the hearings on the $800,000,000 naval appropriation bill before the House Naval Affairs Committee, the atmosphere was even more electric than on the Senate floor. Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Naval Operations, marched in with a statement prepared to express and explain the reasons the Navy wants the money, to wit:

"The moderate increase in naval power for which authorization is provided in this bill is necessary to provide defense against attack on our shores by possible enemies, in view of foreign naval expansion now well under way. There is nothing in this program that would permit of aggressive action, of policing the world, or of projecting an attack against the territory of any other naval power."

But the Committee members were too excited to accept this calm analysis of the situation. They began asking questions, like Congressmen, and Admiral Leahy began answering them, like the blunt sea dog he is.

At week's end came what isolationists took to be the most ominous revelation. Illinois' Congressman Church wanted to know if it was true that President Roosevelt had held up his Rearmament message until Capt. Royal E. Ingersoll returned to Washington from London, where he conferred with the British Admiralty? Admiral Leahy, groggy from five days on the stand, nevertheless kept a grip on himself and said he did not know. Who was Capt. Ingersoll? "He is the chief of War Plans Division in my office." Representative Church thereupon demanded an outright statement of whether a U. S.-British naval understanding actually existed. Loudly Chairman Vinson banged his gavel but Connecticut's Phillips shouted: "No, let him ask his question." Dead silence descended on the committee room as Admiral Leahy replied :

"I will make no statement in this connection in public hearings. However, I will make frank statements in private session; of course, with the understanding that it is absolutely secret, on the basis that it is vital to the interests and defense of the country."

Whether he intended it or not, Admiral Leahy's public silence was a maybe answer to Representative Church's inquiry. And hardly had the Admiral left the stand than the State Department hit the front page with what looked like an ultimatum, identical with two others from Britain and France, to Japan. The U. S. asked point blank whether Japan was building or planning to build 46,000-ton super-battleships, as "persistently and cumulatively" reported, and demanded an answer "not later than February 20 next."

Story. Under the 1936 Naval Treaty the signers--U. S., France and Britain--are bound morally if not legally to go through the formality of asking a non-signer if it has exceeded the 35,000 capital ship limit before the signers can take steps to match or better it. This fact more or less escaped the isolationists, who spent a jittery weekend.

What escaped practically everyone, however, was the story of why Admiral Leahy was at such pains to be secret about what Captain Ingersoll had been up to. The Admiral, according to best informed Washington newsmen, had two good reasons:

1) Captain Ingersoll, one of the experts at the 1936 London Conference, had gone to England to find out just how to build a big battleship. The U. S. had not laid one down in 20 years and had indeed torn up one keel recently laid.

2) Captain Ingersoll had gone to England to confirm reports of Japan's big battleship building, had had them confirmed. But how could Admiral Leahy spill that story with Mr. Hull's formal question to Japan on the subject about to be put on the cable in four hours?

Hull's No. Isolationists were soothed at the start of this week when Admiral Leahy, resuming his testimony, flatly declared: "The Navy has no thought of obtaining assistance from any other nation . . . there are no understandings." But next day came the reassurance isolationists most desired: a message to the Senate from Secretary Hull. To Senator Johnson's question as to whether the Administration has any express or implied understanding with Great Britain on the use of the Navy, Cordell Hull replied with an emphatic NO.

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