Under the American Constitution foreign policy is the joint concern of the P! ident and the Congress, particularly the Senate. The trouble in recent years has been that the President's foreign policy and Congress's foreign policy have not been the same but have been contradictory, Congress being isolationist and the President believing that a distinction should be drawn between countries which keep international law and those which do not.
Until this the President year made no direct and determined effort to t ing about the triumph of his own conception of what American foreign policy should be. He has enunciated it boldly and retreated e ition The significant e President's foreign policy today is that he is vigorously op ing the Con. gressional or isolationist point of view. There is nothing particularly new in the fact that he does not believe all nations can be treated alike whatever their conduct, which is the principle on which the Neutrality Act is founded There is a very close parallel between the events of the beginning of 19 a those of 1938. In January 1938, Congress met with the President's declaration of the previous October that nations which failed to act in accordance with the law of nation nowa be "guaran ging in their ears. The suggestion w th minds when they began to debate an increased naval programme which the President had requested as a result of the sinking of the Panay and the success of the Japanese attack on China Arguing from the ger l to the particular Congress suspected ti at Britain and America had formed some sort of an understanding to apply the a! c doctrine to Japan.
h public fig ho took the criticism the British Government had failed to back up the American 1932 over-serious determined that the bare fault should not be repeated, end urged the British Government to make it clear that United States would be backed up to the fullest extent in her Far Eastern policy. This well-meaning campaign from London only added fuel to the flames and convinced the isolationists in Congress that there really was some secret understanding which it their patriotic was duty to expose, denounce and defeat The White House and State Department retreated before this isolationist onslaught The whole business of "quarantinir hurriedly dropped, some Administ spokesmen even attempting to explain "quarantine" was really another just lation, the idea being that the United States be put in the isolation ward not that some other nation should be quarantined.
Even more impressive were the denials that the United States had any desire to be backed up by Great Britain. When Prof. Gilbert Murray told the National Liberal Club on February 9 that Britain had assured America she would be ready at once to support them in any action they might tak Japanese invasion of China, the Secretary of State, Mr. Cordell Hull, made a statement to the press on irresponsible and self-appointed experts who made untruthful statements on America's foreign polit At the time it seemed a little hard on Prof. Murray, whose intentions were obviously of the best, but Mr. Hull knew his Congress and knew how perfectly harmless remarks could be twisted until thi med a sinister significance during ihe course of debate. When the Naval Exparsion Bill had to be approved Prof. Murray's cement became one of the chief weapons of the isolationist opposition. A report that Mr. Churchill had referred to "excellent arrangements" with the United States, a speech by Mr. Eden, then Foreign Secretary, in which he mentioned that "parallel action between Britain and the United States was" an indication of {he closeness of such collaboration were also used as a stick with which to beat the Ad: ministration. The Naval Rearmament Bill was finally passed, but only at the price of a complete abandonment of the principle be: hind the quarantine idea.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.