Half Out

Last week the U. S. took its place in a world at war. That enormous fact shaped the stratagems of statesmen and soldiers in Europe (see p. 15). It changed the shape of Government in Washington (see p. 11). It stirred and troubled The People, by whose consent alone the U. S. can go all the way to war. Upon no one man but upon all, its awful burden lay. To the man who more than any other can guide the U. S. toward or away from war, it was fascinating and profoundly stimulating. Franklin Roosevelt, man of crises, went into action as one who enjoys it.

The Two Neutralities? As he had promised, the President laid down two sets of rules for U. S. Neutrality. In one set he conformed to international usage, in the other to Congressional statute. Ten days after they were drafted, two days after Great Britain declared war, Franklin Roosevelt released the first. It forbade aliens on U. S. soil as well as U. S. citizens to take armed service with a belligerent. Others of its 17 rules forbade belligerent ships-of-war to use U. S. harbors for anything more than hurried (24 hour) ports of call, to roam with intent to fight in U. S. waters, to chase one another in & out of American ports, to take on at U. S. docks more fuel than enough to get them to their countries' nearest ports, or to repair damage caused by battle at sea.

For five hours after this proclamation was issued, the U. S. lived by the rules of traditional Neutrality. Plane makers continued to speed battle craft toward embarkation points for Great Britain and France. Makers of guns, bombs, shells, gas, powder, etc. could have done the same had they had shipments to make.* Franklin Roosevelt was pleased to let this state of affairs sink in on Congress and the U. S. people (82% of whom in a Gallup poll blamed Hitler for the war). He then obeyed Congress, recognized that war prevailed, embargoed exports of arms, munitions and materials of war to belligerents in conformity with the Neutrality Act of 1937. U. S. citizens had a view of statutory Neutrality in action.

Little was heard of its effects on U. S. trade, and for good reason. Exports of arms, munitions and related materials in World War I amounted at most to only 25% of total exports to the Allies. In the first six months of 1939 shipments of the materials now embargoed accounted for a peewee proportion of total U. S. exports. Still on the permitted export list were such war necessities as oil, steel, grains and other foodstuffs, even parachutes.

People in the U. S. quickly learned that neither Congress nor President has the final definition of "materials of war." As it did in the first World War, to the vexation of the U. S., Great Britain declared almost every conceivable necessity of life in wartime to be contraband and therefore subject to blockade (see p. 22), making paperwork of the Neutrality Act's precise delineations between military and non-military materials.

"I frankly question," said Michigan's Republican Senator Vandenberg, "whether we can become an arsenal for one belligerent without being the target for the other. I doubt if it is possible to be half in and half out of this war. ..."

Franklin Roosevelt frankly proposed letting the U. S. be an arsenal for the Allies (at good pay) while neutrally offering Germany the materials it could try to slip past the British blockade. His dramatization of statutory neutrality's paradoxes was aimed at bringing Congress to the same view. Such standpatters as Ohio's Taft, Maine's White, Georgia's George and Iowa's Gillette (whose adverse vote defeated the Administration neutrality program last July) switched their stand on the export of arms to belligerents. From outright embargo a Senate majority shifted to cash & carry: to let belligerents buy U. S. arms, pay before shipment, and carry them off in foreign bottoms.

"Limited Emergency." Franklin Roosevelt meantime made much hay of the Neutrality which he had. He busily divided its enforcement between Treasury, Army & Navy and other departments (see p. 22). Attorney General Frank Murphy for the newsreels spoke tensely of spies and of every patriot's duty. Federal legalites searched the Constitution and the statutes for special powers.

First result was a belittled report that price control by decree was near (see p. 64), As President and as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, Franklin Roosevelt indeed had at hand a host of latent powers, all the broader because many are implied rather than specific. Some stem from the U. S. Constitution, some from statutes dating back to the 18th Century, many from laws passed for Woodrow Wilson before and during World War I and never repealed, others from New Deal laws. Last week Attorney General Frank Murphy and his Department of Justice attorneys were under the strictest White House orders not to talk publicly about the extent of these powers.

But the President invoked them. Correspondents at a regular press conference saw him in vigorous mood, as ebullient and confident as in the crisis days of 1933. Behind him sat pale, libertarian Frank Murphy. Mr. Roosevelt announced that what he was about to say would justify no scarelines, nothing but calm. He said this again, and again. "For the proper observance, safeguarding and enforcing of the neutrality of the United States," he then proclaimed a national emergency. (Orally he called it a "limited emergency" by way of minimizing it.) By that stroke he assumed many powers which would be his in actual war. Having done so, he may, among other things, legally:

> Fix prices of food and fuel.

> Take virtually absolute control of dealings in international exchange, and of domestic banking (a power originally granted to prevent "trading with the enemy").

> Enlarge the armed forces to any extent necessary to prevent whatever he considers to be infringements of U. S. Neutrality.

> Close any radio station, or take it over for Government use (see p. 44).

> Seize any vessel within U. S. waters (whose scope he may define at will). )

> Arm U. S. merchantmen (Woodrow Wilson did so in World War I, but Franklin Roosevelt resolved not to do so last week).

Franklin Roosevelt in his proclaimed emergency last week used only three of his emergency powers, 1) He ordered the Army enlarged from 210,000 to 227,000, the Navy from 116,000 to 145,000, the Marine Corps from 19,000 to 25,000, the National Guard from 190,000 to 235,000 (if the States agree). 2) He allotted $500,000 to the State Department to finance repatriation of endangered U. S. citizens in Europe. 3) He upped G-Man Edgar Hoover's force by 150, to hunt down spies.

Inasmuch as the Army was bound to guard the Panama Canal and the vital Caribbean, and the Navy was recommissioning many of her 116 old destroyers and would have to man them for Neutrality patrol, his military measures were not extreme. They did leave the inference that Franklin Roosevelt wanted to be prepared to fight--if not against Naziism, at least for Neutrality. Said Acting Secretary of the Navy Charles Edison, explaining why he would rather keep the Atlantic Squadron near home than convoy U. S. refugees from Europe: "Well, you have seen the reports of submarines in the Caribbean, haven't you?"

*In 1938, foreign countries bought only $7,333,932 worth of such munitions from the U. S.

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