(Written before' the Act was passed)
The Congressional debate on neutrality, widely heralded by the advance publicity as the most important exhibition of democratic methods since the Versailles Treaty debate has proved to use Broadway slang a complete flop. The first few performances drew full houses, but soon the attendance began to fall off and the galleries were only half-filled. Even-members of the cast drifted away into the wings and were observed by scandalized newspapermen to be gathered round the radios listening, no, not to news broadcasts from Europe, but to the baseball game. An atmosphere of semi-torpor is one which? ópirñon# are changed or votes secured. The speakers, however, even if they were not speaking to sway their colleagues could at least tell themselves that they were being read by the folks back home. Even this comforting thought, however, could not be entertained for long as the headlines over the news of the Debate grew narrow and the Space devoted to it less.
The debate shouldered and smoked dull and heavy. The subject had been for so long before the public that any argument worth stating had already been stated time and time again. The Senators themselves had contributed to the surfeit by speaking over the radio long before the actual debate in Washington began whenever opportunity and free time presented itself.
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Perhaps another reason for the lack of fire in the debate was that the issue had been so narrowed down that there was really very little to grow fiery about. The beliefs held in common by, far outweighed the differences. All Senators, on whatever side they spoke, were agreed that the United States should not enter the war but should remain strictly neutral, yet nearly all, though many would not confess the fact, hoped the Allied powers would win and Hitlerism be defeated. It would have been so easy to take the position that since these views were held in common why not agree to pass a neutrality act which would benefit the Allied powers rather than one which would benefit Germany since it was evident that whatever sort of an act was adopted would favour one side or another. But instead there were long discussions of international law, of the impossibility of changing the rules in the midst of the game, of the need to keep war at a distance, as though the debate were on a war declaration instead of a neutrality act.
The central point of the debate was the arms embargo repeal. There was general agreement that the United States should no longer insist upon freedom of the seas, since any attempt to follow out that policy might lead Americans into trouble, which would lead to public indignation, which would lead to entering the war. The arms embargo repeal issue, however, was seized upon by the isolationists as a symbol of a tendency they detected in the Administration to take too much interest in matters which went on outside the United States and therefore should not concern Americans. They agreed that if freedom of the seas was Abandoned and American vessels withdrawn from the trade routes to belligerent countries there could be little danger of America's emotions being aroused by ship-sinkings. But they feared that repeal of the embargo might be regarded by Germany as a hostile act, which she would resent and might resent so forcefully that American anger would be roused against her and the country find itself dragged in the war by a back door.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.