Crisis Eclipsed

The big, buff brick Greek legation on Washington's Massachusetts Avenue was quiet last week; on sunny mornings a Negro yardman hosed down the sidewalks; a white-coated houseman swung open the door to visitors in grand unconcern. Inside, white-haired, friendly little Minister Cimon P. Diamantopoulos gravely stated his pride in his country. Throughout the U. S., in Greek neighborhoods with their fruit stands, vegetable markets, small restaurants and grocery stores, the U. S.'s 700,000 Greeks discussed the news. In the Italian quarters -- it was the 18th anniversary of Mussolini's march on Rome--fruit peddlers and bootblacks told enquiring reporters v/hat they thought of Italy's war on Greece, but would not give their names or addresses, lest they be accused of belonging to the quinta colonna (fifth column).

Between speeches in Manhattan and Boston, President Roosevelt last week spent a day in Washington facing this new international problem. He and the State Department had faced many such situations before. They had developed a routine treatment: a solemn condemnation of the aggression; the freezing of the invaded country's U. S. funds, lest they fall into the hands of the invader. But last week the familiar crisis routine was not re-enacted. The President, who had long professed to be so occupied with foreign affairs that he had no time for political campaigning, was now so occupied with campaigning that he could spare only a brief interlude for the troubles of Greece. His limousine spirited him from Union Station to the White House. Even the press hardly noticed when Secretary of State Hull and Under Secretary Welles went to him, conferred, departed.

No condemnation of Italian aggression was issued, no Greek credits were frozen. (Minister Diamantopoulos explained that locking up Greek funds would have given the false impression that Greece had already been overrun by Fascist invaders.) Then the hurried President, having attended to his duties, hastily returned to the main business on hand, campaigning. For the first time in several months domestic politics took precedence over international politics, affairs at home came before affairs abroad.

This situation was not to Franklin Roosevelt's political advantage. As long as affairs abroad crowded the campaign and Wendell Willkie off the front page, he had had the spotlight to himself. The reversal of news values gave Franklin Roosevelt the option of sharing the spotlight with his rival or of losing it entirely.

Ever astute, he made the best of the situation, made an important announcement part of his campaign. Said he in his campaign speech at Boston:

"Tonight I am privileged to make an announcement. . . . The British within the past few days have asked for permission to negotiate again with American manufacturers for 12,000 additional planes. . . . When those additional orders are approved, as I hope they will be, they will bring Britain's present orders for military planes from the U. S. to more than 26,000." (The present U. S. program calls for 14,000 airplanes for the British by April 1, 1942, and many experts doubted whether it could in practice be substantially increased.)

Meanwhile, with ostentatious secrecy, a destroyer flotilla of the U. S. Navy departed on a mystery voyage to waters near Martinique. With rumors multiplying of the Vichy Government's aggressive collaboration with Hitler, with Vice Premier Laval asserting that democracy throughout the world was dead, with no U. S.-built warplanes destined for France still immobilized in Martinique, the significance of that move caused some good guesses (see p. 35). Five destroyers and a seaplane tender slipped out of Key West; three others, attended by eleven seaplanes, followed them. At the same time 1,200 Air Corps officers and men arrived at San Juan, Puerto Rico, with a squadron of naval patrol planes. Diplomatically, Secretary Hull called attention to the presence of this fleet near Martinique by announcing that these were merely routine Navy maneuvers.

In all these things the stage was being set for events which in the next few weeks may be written in largest headlines. In the mind of the people, as in the mind of the President, the biggest news which may follow the U. S. election was momentarily obscured by the hulking figure of this week's imminent event.

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