Washington, Dec. 26.
RESIDENT Roosevelt will strengthen American foreign policy in 1939 to meet the pressure of totalitarian powers in the western hemisphere and the Orient, high Administration officials predicted today in surveying international events of the past year, Government officials based their prediction on the increasingly firm lstond taken by the United States in the latter months of 1938, including con: tent American pressure for the maintenance of the Open Door.in China, This pressure, it was pointed out, has been exerted despite Japan's resistance and objection to interference {from third Powers in the Far East, and at the risk of endangering American-Japanese relations, Other events of 1938 which were cited here as indicating the president's determination to maintain American rights and interests abroad included the bluntly worded protests to Japan against the fatal bombing of the U.S.S. Panay and Japan's prompt payment jof indemnity; persistent Notes to the European anti-Semitic governments demanding assurances that the rights and interests lof American Jews would not be violated, Washington's prompt demand, several mes reiterated, that Germany assume responsibility for payment of Austria's post-war debt to the United States, constituted another indication of a firmer policy.
President Roosevelt's statement that the United States would not tolerate foreign aggression against Canada, and the' President's intervention in the October European crisis over Czechoslovakia, America's ejection of Germany's protest against the recent anti-Nazi' speech delivered by the Secretary of Interior, Mr. Harold Ickes, all in conjunction with the Lima 'Declaration which included the main objectives of the American delegation to the Pan-American Conference, further ins @icated the trend in' Washington, 'The Government's record peace-lime rearmament programme, cluding plans for the defence of the entire western hemisphere, while continuing pressure for' pay: ment of indemnity by the Mexican government for American of lands recently confiscated in Mexico, and the extension of credits to China and renewal of the US-China exchange agreement which was have expired at the end of this y culminated the strengthening of ties with Britain which led to the ex: tension of trade treaties to include the United Kingdom,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.