Czechs and achieved a peace with dishonour yatiier than a peace with honour.
Though many of the leading publicists have exceeded credibility in their denunciation of the Munich settlement, an outstanding fact which shines through the angry clouds of rhetoric is that the American Administration give it their fullest support. The United States never accepted the Versailles Treaty' fand therefore has not directly accepted any official responsibility for the changes which have now been made in the new European order it established.
Nevertheless Government spokesmen emphasize and, as some might thirk exaggerate, the role played by President Roosevelt in bringing it about. His final letter to Hitler snd his encouragement of Signor Mussolini's peace appeal are held by many Americans to have tipped the scale in favour of peace. The President himself showed clearly what his personal opinion of the Munich Conference was when he urged American business and labour to use it as a model and settle their own differences in sweet reasonableness instead of indulging in name calling and sabre rattling, 'Was the President's action in appealing to the two dictators a reversal of American policy? Ofcials say no; many commentators say yes, The exact picture is better understood if the confused nature of American' foreign policy is remembered. war. They have, therefore, continued to attack France and Britain because the conduct of those two countries did not measure up to the ideal conditions of world order based on justice and international aw out lined so frequently by the Secretary of State. Their decision was all the easier to} make since they combined their vicarious courage with the axiomatic assumption that America would remain in splendid isolation.
Had war actually broken out it is impos-' sible to free one's mind entirely from the suspicion that they would have been inclined to lump all belligerents, in the spirit of the Neutrality Act, into the same basket. Making a virtue of geography they would have treated the Atlantic Ocean as though it were a bril-Mantly conceived P.W.A. project and have congratulated themselves on the superior wisdom of the United States in being able to settle all its disputes by discussion, Official irritation at the attitude assumed by so many American writers hi scarcely been disguised. was even reflected can viously but pointedly in an editorial in the Washington "Post." After reminding its contemporaries of the "heavy responsibility' which lay on the press the "Post" bluntly' suggested that a proper understanding of the situation required "some discounting of current news and comment thereon, Correspondents, editors and commentators are none of them omniscient In the landscape of American foreign policy, looming through the mists of con-fioting interpretation, there towers one [dominating feature—the Int. Fuji of American foreign policy—the Neutrality Act. The Act is based on the assumption that there is. no right or wrong in wars fought outside the western hemisphere. There are merely belligerents who must all be treated alike.
The present Secretary of State, Mr. Cordell Hull, was a prophet of a new conception of American policy based on a clear distinct tion between right and wrong in international affairs. But even his great faith was not suMicient to move the Neutrality Act mountain. To drop metaphor, the Secretary of State was advocating a policy which was in advance of American public opinion. He hoped nevertheless that other countries would accept and carry out his conception of what, the international order should be; one which the domestic political situation prevented him from assuming any responsibility for achiev-
The problem which the American Government must solve in the near future is, put! at its briefest, this—the War of Independence, was fought not only to be freed of English domination but to be free from the "European system." Subsequent policy all turned upon that desire. The World War brought the country back into the European system. The Neutrality Act was passed to prevent such thing ever happening again. But now the world has become narrower and more complex so that there is, truly speaking, only:
world system of which the United States, protest as she may, is an integral part. What must be American policy in the light lof these facts, and how can they be brought) home to an American public still clinging to the fictions of the past?
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.