Hull's Week

For the first time in history the President and Vice President were last week both outside the territorial U. S. (see p. 9). In fact, if not in theory, Secretary of State Cordell Hull became the Acting President of the U. S. under the Act of Succession of 1886.* If solemn Secretary Hull had not already realized the gravity of his trust, he must have done so upon receiving a telegram from Senator Gerald Prentice Nye, as that North Dakotan sailed away with other Congressional junketeers to the Philippines (see col. 1), concluding: "I wish you every success and great strength in these trying hours upon your office."

Trying was a mild description of Mr. Hull's hours. The custodian of an arms embargo against Italy and Ethiopia and a brace of general neutrality proclamations had, as yet, no record of actual munitions being bootlegged to either belligerent. But U. S. motormakers, it was revealed, had already shipped 2,200 trucks and busses to the Italians in Africa. Thumbing his nose at the State Department, President Walter Teagle of Standard Oil of New Jersey announced that his firm had been doing business with Italy for more than 40 years and was not ready to quit now. The American Export Liner Exochorda, one of the biggest U. S. freighters in the Mediterranean service, steamed out of Jersey City with the greatest cargo in her career, consisting chiefly of such near-war materials as lubricating oil, copper, motors, apparently consigned to Italy.

Against this sort of business, the Secretary of State could only use his tongue, which he did twice during the week. To the Pan American Institute of Geography & History, meeting in Washington, he declared: "Knowing the sincere devotion to the cause of peace of the governments and peoples of the Americas, I am confident that I speak for all when, in the name of our 21 nations, I say that we are determined to keep the peace and that we call upon the rest of the world to do likewise."

"While in Africa the cannon throw their projectiles and airplanes drop their bombs," the Acting President told the New York Herald Tribune's Forum on Current Affairs, ". . . we are determined not to enter into armed conflicts that may arise between other countries, and to enforce such policies as may be required to avoid that risk."

* A point on which constitutional lawyers sharpen their wits is whether a U. S. official is outside his country when he is aboard a U. S. vessel.

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