The President's decisioti to se Secretary of State, Mr. Sumner Welles (he returned to the United States on Thursday), fon a tour of Italy, Germany, France and Eng-and attracted more attention and stirred up more comment in the United States than any move in foreign affairs taken by the President since the war started. The oMecial statement announcing the visit doctored it was "solely for the purpose of advising the President and the Secretary of State as to present conditions in Europe.
This explanation might have quietened speculation had it not been for two other circumstances. The first of these was an hour afterwards the Secretary of State, Mr. Hull, released a prepared statement an-ouncing' that he had already. started and proposed to continue conversations with other neutrals on the future restoration of world peace on a sound and lasting basis. The conversations were "in the nature of preliminary inquiries relating to 2 sound ternational economic system and at the same lime world-wide reduction of armaments.
Matters involving present war conditions are not a part of these preliminary conversa~ tons."
The two sets of negotiations or conversa~ tions were, it was explained, entirely dis~ tinct, but if the Administration had reali desired to keep them separate in the mind of the general public, they would not have both been announced on the same day, with the inevitable result that they were linked together by the newspaper headlines. Each move considered separately' might have pass with only minor attention. The two, taken together, were regarded as of major importance.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.