March 11.
If the U. S; Congress eventually passes the Lewis Bill to repeal all the neutrality legislation on the Federal statute books, and there is every reason to believe that it will, it will have made a volte face which. on the face of it, is amazing. It was only on May 1, 1937 that the well-known Neutrality Act was approved, so that within about two years that measure will have been discarded as part of the general foreign policy of the United States. 'Senator Hiram Johnson does not appear to be quite correct when he alleges that the administration forced the Act down the legislators' throats, for in the controversy which raged over the matter in 1936 President Roosevelt kept his own counsel, though he was believed to be supposed, on principle, to a policy of "100 per cent. neutrality," where such a policy threatened the destruction of the democratic states. Tt was the seeming imminence of war in 1936 which posed a difficult problem for American pacifism. A large part of the President's following favoured complete neutrality in the event of a war breaking out in Europe, with what would amount to practically a total embargo, not only on munitions, but on any materials potentially useful to the combatants. On this theory the victims of European aggression were to be treated exactly the same as the aggressors, bhut despite this, the supporters of the complete neutrality' doctrine pressed for enactment of Jogislation which would completely tie the President's hands in the matter.
Opposed to them was a much smaller body which argued that this was a harsh and short-sighted view of the nation's obligations, and that situations might arise—a war, say,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.