Contours

Dr. George Horace Gallup, the Iowa professor of journalism who developed public pulse-taking as an aid to advertisers, later as a mirror to newsreaders, a guide to politicians, last week reported that, of his pollees:

> 65% favored boycotting Germany.

> 57% wanted the Neutrality Act revised to let the U. S. sell war supplies to France and England. (Three years ago pollees favored embargoes on war material.)

> 51% expected European war this year.

> 58% believed the U. S. would be drawn into it. (In 1937 only 44% so believed.)

While Dr. Gallup's doorbell-ringers sought a statistical answer to the question of whether or not people want the U. S. to participate in a world conference to avert war, TIME through its correspondents and news services traced a contour map of U. S. public opinion. Object: to break down Dr. Gallup's national totals into the kinds and degrees of war sentiment dominant in the U. S. last week prior to Franklin Roosevelt's dramatic peace invitation to the Dictators (see P-13).

Except for a few spots (Denver, Chicago), preoccupation with the war question was general. Everywhere people opposed any war but sided with the Democracies if there must be one. Everywhere their belief that should Europe fight, the U. S. would be drawn in, was a fatalistic, unhappy, shoulder-shrugging belief. In few quarters was any one so cheerfully cynical as retired General Smedley D. ("Gimlet Eye") Butler of the U. S. Marines, who said at Albuquerque, N. Mex.: "After Italy and Germany get the swamps and deserts they're after, they'll all sit down and talk it over." Still fewer were as cheerfully bellicose as Sergeant Alvin C. York, No. 1 U. S. hero of the last war, who said at Pall Mall. Tenn.:

"Hitler and Mussolini jes' need a good whuppin' and it looks like Uncle Sam's gonna have to do it."

A common attitude of American Legionnaires was: "No fighting for us off U. S. soil."

On the Northwest Coast, with Japan straight across the Pacific, awareness of war's imminence was at peak. People took its coming for granted. Goat-bearded young Roman Catholic Bishop Gerald Shaughnessy of Seattle preached loudly against U. S. participation. A British Consul and the journalist dean at Washington State University argued hotly, their nerves on edge, as to who should "shut up," Britain or the U. S. The man-in-the-street's preoccupation was: will the draft get me?

In Portland, Ore. pessimism was profound. Wealthy families were reported hoarding food supplies in mountain cabins. Meddling in Europe's affairs was deplored in a newspaper poll, but Portland's leading liberal minister, Unitarian Richard M. Steiner declared: "If war comes, let us move swiftly to make it as short as possible." He proposed giving U. S. food and war supplies to the Democracies gratis.

San Francisco, believing war inevitable, wanted U. S. action to be constructive. A front-page editorial last month in the conservative Chronicle, calling loudly for a stand against the Dictators, was applauded by 70% of letters-to-the-editor. At the Institute of Pacific Relations' round table talks. President Roosevelt's plan to use all measures short of war was seconded.

Los Angeles was not yet mad enough at Hitler to want to fight him abroad, but anger was rising. The big, sprawling metropolis ("seven suburbs in search of a city") seemed not really concerned about the war threat. Europe is a long way from Los Angeles.

Idaho, home of Isolationist Senator Borah, backed his judgment and viewed with alarm the direction in which events were drifting. To some young Idahoans, the prospect of war seemed adventurous. ("Look at the fun Dad had in the World War.") Others talked of heading for the hills with a pack horse.

Montana, whose copper mines keep her sensitive to world affairs, remembered that Butte's population hit 100,000 during the World War, is but 40,000 now. Yet miners said that if war were needed to raise their wages, they would sooner go without the raise.

Denver paid less attention to last week's war scare than to last September's. Of just one thing Coloradoans were pessimistically certain: in another European war the U. S. would again be "played for a sucker" by England and France.

Texas, with oil, beef, cotton and wool to sell, was not blind to the possible profits war would bring. With military aviation booming at San Antonio, Texas was well aware how near war might be. But let it be Europe's war, said Texas, "We can keep out of it . . . Roosevelt better watch his step." But Texas agreed with Franklin Roosevelt on getting ready.

Minneapolis was isolationist: let Britain stop Hitler. President Roosevelt's interventionist policy was appraised as largely bluff, and approved as such.

Iowa felt strongly that European war was inevitable and blamed Hitler more bitterly than 1941's Kaiser. Iowa would send the Democracies supplies and munitions, but not men.

Chicagoans were mostly skeptical that there would be any war.

Detroit editors listened intently to some motor and oil bigwigs who said there would be no European war, and who welcomed Hitler's firming grip on Central Europe because, they said, it would bring order out of chaos there. Exciting to Detroit was the thought that the new Dodge truck plant, world's largest, could be transformed overnight to produce shells, cannon or airplanes. Detroit editors differed with their tycoons: they believed European war inescapable, U. S. participation almost obligatory. Men-in-the-street did not yet take the situation personally, but newsstand sales were far above normal on crisis days.

Pittsburgh was reported swinging from isolation to hemisphere defense, but not yet to helping in Europe. Schenley High School, a famed local barometer, voted 55-45% against "cooperation" with France and England. Talk about the war-products possibilities of Pittsburgh's multifarious factories made labor recall war wages even as capital recalled war profits.

The South, from New Orleans to Miami and from Raleigh to Memphis, appeared solidly disgusted with Hitler & Mussolini. But they were Britain's and France's headaches, not the South's. Also evident was annoyance at Jews for having helped precipitate so much fuss & bother.

Eastern Seaboard residents were most agitated by the war atmosphere, most susceptible to reasons for and against helping the Democracies, least able to suggest how the U. S. might extricate itself from the march of events. Among leading newspapers, only the New York Daily News, Philadelphia Record (and New York Post) and the Hearstpapers were planted solidly against intervention or entanglement. In Boston, Franklin Roosevelt was sharply blamed for taking the country so close to the brink. In contrast to the Southeast's antiSemitism, sympathy for Hitler's Jewish victims was a chief sinew of militant sentiment in the Northeast. Another element was the strain of prolonged suspense. After weeks of crises and uncertainties, people were beginning to say: "I wish they'd go to war over there and get this damn thing settled."

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