Probe Continued

For the past three weeks, political wise-acres have been saying that in asking for $800,000,000 for Navy construction in addition to the regular $500,000,000 appropriation, Franklin Roosevelt was trying to get out of Congress an approval of his foreign policy in the misleading shape of a Navy Bill. Last week it seemed that something quite different had happened. It seemed that powerful isolationists were using the Navy Bill as a means of smoking out, and then perhaps modifying, the President's foreign policy.

For. Concluding the sixth day of his appearance before the House Naval Affairs Committee, which had scheduled but two days for the hearings, Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Naval Operations, said his last say in behalf of the bill. According to him, the Navy needed every penny of the money because costly $65,000,000 battleships were still the best available allaround naval weapons. The nation's highest ranking seadog announced that "recent air operations on the Coast of China" had convinced him that airplanes alone could not prevent an enemy expeditionary force from landing, and that airplanes alone could not successfully prevent a blockade or act as a convoy.

Questioned again about the recent London activities of his aide. Captain Royal Ingersoll--who was last week sensationally reported by the British political tipsheet The Week to have been engaged in showing the British admiralty a complete outline of Japanese Naval plans stolen in Tokyo by a U. S. secret agent--Admiral Leahy was still reluctant to do more than admit that in London Captain Ingersoll had indeed discussed "tonnage of combatant ships."

The most convincing argument brought forth by the Admiral to refute isolationists who believe that the Big Navy bill is somehow connected with a secret Anglo-U. S. naval agreement was that the reason the Navy wanted such a big fleet was to make it independent of the need for just such alliances, give it the strength to protect both coasts alone. Thereupon, the committee called in the Big Navy bill's opponents.

Against. At 3:15, on the stormy morning of April 6, 1917, when the U. S. House of Representatives voted 373-to-50 to declare that a state of war existed with Germany, a memorable incident took place on the floor. As the clerk called the roll after a day of historic debate, the first woman Representative in U. S. history, and then the only woman in Congress, Montana's Jeannette Rankin, sat silent in her seat instead of voting. Before the second roll call, Uncle Joe Cannon went to her side, begged her, as the Representative of U. S. womanhood, to cast her decision one way or the other. On the second roll call, Representative Rankin, with tears in her eyes, stood up to say: "I want to stand by my country but I cannot vote for War. I vote No."

Last week, Jeannette Rankin, now legislative Secretary of the National Council for the Prevention of War, was the first opponent of the Big Navy bill heard by the Committee. The N. C. P. W. takes in about $150,000 a year, spends some of it trying to defeat "strong defense" advocates for Congress, including the Committee's Chairman Carl Vinson, who introduced the Big Navy bill. Said Secretary Rankin: "It is argued that the proposed increases are for defense but there is no assurance as to what the Government contemplates defending. . . . We maintain that a wholly abnormal naval building program on the part of the United States will intensify international tensions and distrust and increase the speed with which humanity is drifting into the general destruction of another World War."

Most cogent of a string of other objectors to a bigger U. S. Navy was eminent Historian Charles A. Beard whose thesis was the eminently simple one that the only possible excuse for giving the Navy $800,000,000 was to implement the President's desire to "quarantine" aggressor nations; that such a quarantine would mean "aggressive warfare in the far Pacific or the far Atlantic"; and that if, on the contrary, "Congress intends to provide defense for the American domain of interest in this hemisphere, it should make corresponding alterations in the President's program." Historian Beard called for a foreign policy of "abstaining from the quarrels of Europe and Asia, avoiding all gratuitous advice and insults to foreign governments, and defending the continental home of the U. S. and adjacent waters," pointed out that "the idea of Germany, Italy or Japan sending a fleet of battleships conveying 500,000 soldiers across the seas in majestic array is simply fantastic. . . ." Gist of his advice to the Committee was to "probe to the very bottom" the commitments of foreign policy authorized by the President's armament program before endorsing his proposal.

Wink & Nod. Senator Hiram Johnson of California, the Great Isolationist, had been doing practically nothing for a fortnight but probing for such a commitment. He was specifically interested in a possible agreement between the U. S. and Britain already bound by the 1936 Naval Treaty and two of the "democracies" which Franklin Roosevelt has intimated may eventually have to take the totalitarian powers over their knees. In response to direct questioning, Admiral Leahy had denied point-blank the existence of such an agreement. So had Chairman Vinson of the House Naval Affairs Committee. So had Secretary of State Hull. At the week's beginning, Senator Johnson had declared himself entirely satisfied. Suddenly he changed his mind, stormily asked Mr. Hull for a further definition of foreign policy. Said he, on the Senate floor:

"I fear that the Secretary of State and I were taken for a ride the other day and that . . . perhaps something was in the wind he did not know and I did not know."

Best guess as to what had upset Senator Johnson's newly acquired composure was an observation anent Captain Ingersoll's trip by New York Times Columnist Arthur Krock to the effect that he was "expertly informed that, should it at any time serve the interests of the two great democracies, their Navies would automatically complement each other in the Pacific." Added Columnist Krock: "This is the kind of understanding that is hardly more than a wink or a nod, the sort of thing not Mr. Johnson or anyone else can extract from men's inner minds by means of a resolution."

Later on, when Major General Johnson Hagood, retired, testifying before the House Committee, again lamented the absence of a clear statement of naval policy, Chairman Vinson interrupted with a reply that to some extent at least served to quiet fears that the Navy was to be used to help England police or challenge the world. He said that the bill itself would contain a "definite statement of what the fundamental naval policy of this country is," proceeded to read it. The bill defined the fundamental naval policy of the U. S. to be maintaining a Navy adequate to afford "protection to the coastline in both oceans at one and the same time; to protect the Panama Canal, Alaska, Hawaii and our insular possessions; . . . to guarantee our national security, but not aggression; . . . provide a defense that will keep any potential enemy away from our shores."

This was perhaps the only remaining way to say what half-a-dozen other Administration spokesmen had been saying for three weeks. But no one had yet been very convincing about the threat which made it a practical necessity for the U. S. to join the rest of the world (excluding The Netherlands and Scandinavia) in the current armament marathon, to take a further step away from the economy of welfare and toward the economy of warfare prevailing in the bankrupt nations of the world.

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