"Overt Act"

The question of U.S. intervention in the war rode clamorously into Congress last week on the back of the Ship Seizure Bill. The bill gave the President authority to purchase or lease some 500,000 tons of Danish, Italian, French, German, Belgian, Rumanian, Estonian and Lithuanian vessels which lie idle in U.S. harbors and throw them into the Battle of the Atlantic. In the House the bill stirred up the whole argument over convoys, interventionists called the bill "an act of war," and for the third time the German Government sent a formal protest.

Most vehemently opposed to the bill were House Republicans.-- Missouri's Dewey Short attacked the measure as "just another slap in the face and kick in the pants to the Axis," which was just as brash, said Short, as if he himself stepped into the ring with Joe Louis. Republicans trying to hobble the bill with an amendment which would prevent the President from transferring German and Italian ships to the British, cheered to the roof mention of Lindbergh.

Democrats, shouting that the non-interventionists were "appeasers and defeatists," beat four amendments down. A fifth which got through was a provision to pay for the seized vessels of debtor nations with credit on their debts. Majority Leader McCormack declared that this was "more of an overt act" than anything in the original measure, accused Republicans of talking one way and voting another.

As the bill finally passed the House with 100 Republicans (out of 151 who voted) and 19 Democrats voting against it, the scene shifted to the Senate. There too the convoy argument trailed it. Michigan's Vandenberg produced a letter from Maritime Commission Chairman Emory Land which reported that only eight out of 205 ships clearing from U.S. ports for the United Kingdom between Dec. 30 and March 31 had been sunk. Non-interventionists triumphantly pointed to the figures as proof that ship sinkings were much less alarming than the British and the Administration had painted.

The unhappy Rear Admiral Land, who had calculated as sinkings only those reported by the press, sputtered that "there is reason to believe that actual losses run substantially greater than reported losses." The British hastened to release their figure for April losses: 488,000 tons.

At week's end, as a report came that 27 U.S. merchant ships would steam to the Red Sea with supplies for the British troops in Africa and the Near East, Senate noninterventionists loaded their blunderbusses. They hoped to wing the ship bill when it reached the Senate floor and tie an anti-convoy amendment to its tail. But Administration forces were certain they had the votes to carry the measure through as the President had ordered it.

* in a poll of 9,000 party leaders The Republican (official publication of the Youing Republicans) recorded that 60% voted against "steps toward war" and 40% favored withdrawing opposition to the Administration "in all matters of foreign policy": 52% opposed and 48% favored sending the U.S. Army, Navy and air forces to Britain if it became apparent that otherwise she would go down: 65% favored U.S. particapation in the peace conference: 69% opposed Union Now.

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