Arms from America
The eyes of all the world have been fixed upon the United States in the long-drawn-out conflict over the Neutrality Act and its amendment, for upon the issue depended the power of the democracies to draw upon America's vast reservoir of manufacturing-power. Yet neither the President and those who, with him, wanted to amend the Act so as to enable belligerents to buy and take away munitions at their own risk, nor his opponents, had any other object but to make America's neutrality real and to keep her citizens away from war adventures. The President's contention was that to deny Americans the right to sell munitions to a belligerent that was able to pay for them and carry them away was to weight the scales against a Power that had command of the sea. The sincerity of this contention is revealed in the many provisions which are made to keep Americans and registered American ships out of the war zone. Soviet Russia, generally ready to render easy lip- service to Germany, has accused America of betraying neutrality—a strange accusation from a country which is also neutral and is also proposing to supply Germany. The United States is as ready to supply Germany, if she will come and buy, as Russia is to supply Britain, which she is actually doing.
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