Commonwealth and Foreign
AMERICA WATCHES
By ERWIN
THE Senatorial debate about America's neutrality policy drags drearily along toward an apparently inevitable conclusion : repeal of the arms embargo and enactment of a series of stiff and unprecedented self-denying ordinances. So long as the Allied Powers have the cash and the ships, they will be able under the putative law to avail themselves of the full products of American factories and mines and farms. There is, as I write, a loophole in the Bill through which belligerents could obtain all kinds of American good.; by transhipment through neutrals, reaching the neutral port on United States ships and on any sort ol credit terms. Perhaps this loophole will be plugged before the law is enacted.
The debate has added very little to our knowledge of American public opinion. The nation remains, in Lincoln's phrase, "half slave and half free ": it is ?nti-war and anti- Hitler at the same time. And Lincoln said a nation could not so remain. However, American sentiment against actual participation in war gets continually stronger. On that hope the entire nation unites. The President says repeatedly that he does not believe it to be necessary for the United States to get into the war. Woodrow Wilson said substantially the same thing until the last minute in 1917. In 1914-17, too, sentiment was largely against American par- ticipation. But in those years national opinion had not become nearly so anti-German as it is anti-Hitler today. That is one of the striking differences between our present and past neutralities.
The American Congressional situation must confuse over- sea readers. Political parties, of course, are not respon- sible in the British sense. The Administration cannot count on its own majority on any given issue, and it remains in office despite parliamentary defeats. But perhaps the strangest aspect of the present situation is the rule per- mitting unlimited debate in the Senate, in the face of the fact that the isolationists have not got the votes to defeat arms-embargo repeal.
The Washington newspapermen, always an enterprising group, made their contribution to the situation by polling every member of the Senate before the session began, asking .them how they were going to vote on embargo repeal. It was discovered that out of 96 Senators, 55 were prepared to pledge themselves to vote for repeal, only 25 were pledged against repeal, and 16 were doubtful. These figures are based on actual quoted statements from the individual Senators. [Since this was written the first division on the Arms Embargo Bill gave 65 votes for the Administration, 26 against—Ed., The Spectator.] In such circumstances, a long and delaying debate seems a singularly futile business. But a vote on the final roll-call is better than a vote in a poll, and some Senators are adept at explaining shifts and changes. Having committed themselves in the poll, some are already squirming and trying to straddle the fence. But the outlook is that at least 55 of them will vote for repeal, and that the American aircraft factories, to begin with, will be opened to Allied purchasers by the middle of November. This time-estimate may be sanguine, but it is probably not far wrong.
In obtaining this substantial prospective majority for repeal, the Administration cut the ground from under the isolationists' feet by drafting a very restrictive Bill. In most respects, apart from the possible loophole through tran- shipment, the President is bound hand and foot. Congress is even given power to decide when war exists, in case the President fails to do so—as he has in the Sino-Japanese hostilities. Most of the restrictions are self-denying, rather than hindrances to belligerents who have money and sea- power. When British credits are exhausted, when British shipping is short, then the terms of the Neutrality Act would begin to pinch. But presumably that point will not be reached for some time, and many things can happen in between.
British observers of American policy should not conclude that the United States will " inevitably " be drawn in. Ger- man policy toward specific American interests has been most discreet, so far ; the Neutrality Act will remove many of the old causes of dispute, if American ships and citizens are kept out of combat areas ; if Germany accepts the Pan-American proposal for a 3oo-mile " peace-belt " around the Americas, still other causes of conflict will be removed.
More fundamental causes of involvement have not yet become positively operative. It is safe to say that American public opinion will not support entry into war until it is overwhelmingly convinced that the cause of the democracies is going under. Too many Americans, disillusioned from Versailles to Munich and refusing to admit any responsi- bility therein, regard the war as another episode in Europe's endless game of "power politics." This was the theme of the isolationists in the Senate debate.
Not a few leaders of opinion, well in advance of the mass, challenge the power-politics assumption, and realise that 411 the values dear to Americans are also at stake. It will be some time before this conclusion is generally accepted.
But the man-in-the-street may be farther along than we in Washington realise. Here is a rather striking case which illustrates, at least, the still fervent character of American altruism—or call it what you will. One of the nation's leading textile engineers called on me the other day. He had twice visited Britain to do professional work in British textile mills. He said he was profoundly sympathetic with the Allied cause, and he wondered whether there might not be a shortage of qualified administrative and technical personnel in British textile mills, with many executives called to war service. If so, he said, he was prepared to recruit a staff of expert American textile engineers to go to England and there serve as best they could to keep British mills operating. He said he wanted neither publicity nor profit, nor did his associates. This possibly visionary sug- gestion is being followed up by correspondence with British textile concerns, and while, of course, it could be destroyed by blatant publicity, there is no need to refrain from men- tioning it. It illustrates, at least, professional goodwill toward a competitor in difficulties.
Against such private illustrations, one must set the ful- minations of the isolationist Senators, and the flood of letters to legislators from the "grass-roots," which testify to an earnest desire of many simple people to crawl into the American hole and pull the hole in on top of them. The storm-cellar is a familiar feature of mid-Western architec- ture, and many Americans regard as a tornado the cosmic forces in Europe's war.
As to national reactions to the war itself: up to the time of writing—Hitler's rumoured speech has not yet been made —there was much failure to understand the reasons for lack of activity on the Western Front ; there was admiration of British success, thus far, in curbing submarine warfare; there was great interest in Hitler's relations with his generals; there was deep admiration for British and French moralc ; there was fundamental faith in the sticking powers of the democracies.
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