In the middle of June President Roosevelt felt sulliciently confident to backup his own foreign policy. Before the outbreak of the war he hid defined it under varying terms as one aggression and of supporting those ike the United States, an interest reventing the breakdown of' all tional law and order. The most phrase used to express this policy was that contained in the President's message to Congress in 1939—"Measures short, of war but stronger than mere words." This policy had never been endorsed by Congress which un~ dor the Constitution has independent powers over foreign policy. When war broke out, the Presidential foreign policy was abandoned nnd that of Congress based upon the Neutral= ity Act ruled supreme. Both parties in the struggle were treated on an equality, while in actual practice most.of the friction was with the Allied Powers, since the Neutrality Act had removed nearly all possible causes of controversy with Germany.
Public opinion passed through various phases as the war progressed and extended its area, At first there was a great deal of sympathy, for the Allied cause. It took form of loping in a rather detached manner for an Allied victory, but at the same time growing considerably irritated when some of the measures which the Allied Powers took to achieve that victory appeared to infringe upon whatever rights and interests the United States had not given up in the Neutrality: Act. A chanye took place with the invasion of Scandinavia, "The majority of the public were now ready to admit that the war was more than a dush of rival imperialisms, or tone of Europe's "age-long boundary disputes." The Nazis, it was realized, were inspired with visions of universal conquest which threaten~ ed the rights of all small nations. But the struggle was still looked upon in a detached manner and felt to be of little material eon cern {0 the United States. The real change came swith startling suddenness when Germans swept through Holland, Belgium and France, The realization that France and England were threatened and that the United States might find itself standing alone in a world dominated by dictators caused a new attitude (0 be taken towards the struggle, One common form in which the public anxiety expressed itself was a chronic fear that the British ect might fall into German hands, The assertion that the British navy was the Monroe Doctrine's first line of defence which would earlier have been reudiated as fantastic nonsense was now ac~ cepted as a matter of course. The change in Public opinion was not confined to the east. In the Middle West, the home of isolationism, the feeling that the United States could al= ways stay out of war by the mere act of volition had disappeared. Old-fashioned post~ war {solationism had evidently been based upon the assumption repeated so confidently by ex-President Herbert Hoover last October, that the democracies could not lose, Behin this feeling of Franco-British impregnability the isolationist doctrine had been able to flourish. Administration policy was also based upon a belief that the Buropean dic= tatorships could never succeed in dominating Europe. The difference between the Admis istration and the isolationists was that the Jatter felt that the United States might "be! dragged in any war which broke out in Europe if great care were not taken to pre= vent American emotions being aroused while the Administration followed a policy of stitt fening the resistance of the European demo-erades to the dictatorship powers, never thinking that if a firm stand Jead to war, they would be placed in serious danger.
To put the matter briefly, Ameri public opinion at last supported the Pi lent's policy of aid stronger than words ther the Congressional policy of absolute neutral ity. Feeling confident of public support the President was able to re-assert his policy, while the supporters of the Congressional neutrality policy, realizing that they had lost public support, began to move towards the President's point of view. The wave of pub-opinion swept on so fast that the profes~ nal isolationists who had made the I reputations by ity Act and raising the ery of "war monger" or "alarmist" whenever it was suggested that 4 policy of doing nothing and sitting still was Inadequate for a great nation, were left derelict and stranded, the capital's most be= wildered and unhappy' men.
At Charlottesville the President declared, "Overwhelmingly we, as a nation, and this applies to all other "Ameri tions, are convinced that military and naval victory for the gods of force and hate would ending the institutions of democracy in the western world—and that equally, therefore, the whole of our pathies lie with those nations that giving their life blood in combat st those forces." Since that Was so,<the Pr sident declared that there were two obvious courses ashieh the United States should pursue.
will extend to the opponents of force the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.