Neutrality War

Like love-passion and hate-passion, peace-passion and war-passion are first cousins. Not accidental was it that Socialists who for years claimed almost a patent on peace propaganda were last week the subject of investigation when the Department of Justice began to check up in San Francisco and Manhattan on the enrollment of volunteers to fight with the Loyalists in Spain. Not accidental is it that bills for "taking the profits out of war,* backed by many peace lovers in Congress, also provide for mobilizing practically all the resources of the U. S. for use in war.-- Not accidental is it that members of the most peace-passionate Congress in U. S. history appear already at bellicose odds over amendments to the Neutrality Act.

But accidents were not lacking last week when the first skirmish of the neutrality war of 1937 was fought. Arrayed on one side was 1) Robert Cuse, naturalized Latvian of Jersey City who had forced the State Department, legally but against its will, to grant him a license to export $2,777,000 of second-hand airplanes and war materials to the Spanish Loyalists (TIME, Jan. n); 2) Captain Jose Santa Maria of the Spanish freighter Mar Cantabrico which lay at a Brooklyn pier loading Mr. Cuse's war goods; 3) Richard L. Dineley who, on the day Congress convened, obtained similar licenses to export $4,500,000 of similar second-hand war goods to Spain via Mexico: 4) Felix Gordon de Ordaz, Spanish Ambassador to Mexico, who was flying to Washington to sign the final papers so that 15 of Mr. Dineley's planes could hastily hop across the border to Mexico.

On the other side were the peace-passionate President, Congress and State Department of the U. S., all eager to make these acts crimes faster than they could be performed. Congress got a hump on. The Foreign Affairs Committee of the House was organized at least three days faster than usual. Chairman Pittman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee drafted an eloquent joint resolution with many whereases describing the brutality of the Spanish conflict, the danger of its dragging the U. S. into war. etc., etc.

The Executive departments did their part.

U. S. Army officers climbed into the hold of the Mar Cantabrico, found 32 field kitchens which the Army had sold as junk, sternly forbade the ship to sail until the stenciled "U. S. Army" was painted out on the kitchens. Customs agents forced a big crate of shoes to be torn open because it weighed 400 lb. and they thought shoes should not weigh so much.

Twenty-four hours after Congress met, the peace-lovers were ready. Senators Pittman, Nye and Vandenberg had their say but the wrangle which might well have taken place was postponed in deference to haste. Only major Senate action was to strip the resolution of its eloquent whereases to clauses forbidding shipment of arms to civil-warring Spain, provide a $10,000 fine and five years in prison as maximum penalty for disobedience. It was passed, 81-to-0.

The Mar Cantabrico was also getting into action. With eight crated airplanes on her decks, the last few not even bolted down, she had cast off and was on her way down the bay toward the Narrows.

It would take her nearly two hours to get to the open sea and the Coast Guard cutter Icarus was on her heels, a Coast Guard amphibian soaring overhead waiting for a radio flash from Washington to stop the ship if need be one inch within the Three-Mile Limit.

The race was neck & neck when the question was put to the House on agreeing by unanimous consent to the joint resolution. Certainly there was no one in the peace-passionate House to object.

"Is there any objection?" "Mr. Speaker, I object," said a lone voice.

Representatives turned around for their first good look at John Toussaint Bernard.

What a Latvian could not do, a Corsican from Eveleth, Minn, would. Farmer-Laborite Bernard in his second day in the House had spoken up. Short, swart, gold-toothed, with a French accent, he won election last fall from the Finnish and Scandinavian voters of non-mining northeast Minnesota. Thirty years ago, aged 14, he entered the U. S. Before the War he worked in the iron mines, after the War got a job as a city fireman. Although an amateur politician, a stump speaker for Minnesota's late Governor Floyd Olson, he never ran for office until last autumn. He served 17 months overseas, while there met the daughter of a foreman in the French arsenal at Toulon whom he later returned to marry. But he does not love war. He admitted afterwards that if the arms had been destined for the Spanish Rebels he would not have objected, but he wanted to make a gesture toward a friendly democratic country.

This unexpected check to Congress was promptly offset by an equally unexpected check to the munitions shipment. Off Sandy Hook the cutter Icarus forced the Mar Cantabrico to heave to. Not peace lovers but two fighters with the Spanish Loyalist forces were responsible. Fliers Bert Acosta and Gordon K. Berry, returning home from abroad, had wired a lawyer in Manhattan, claiming back pay and damages from Spanish Air & Marine Minister Indalecio Prieto. A Federal court had issued a writ libeling any goods aboard the ship belonging to Senor Prieto. The Icarus held the ship for half an hour. Then the Coast Guards decided that since there was nothing on the ship addressed to Senor Prieto, it would be illegal to hold her any longer.

So the Mar Cantabrico sailed safely over the Three-Mile Limit, but the casualties of the skirmish were not yet all counted. An hour later the House passed the resolution, 406 to 1, only Corsican Bernard dissenting. Then it was discovered that the Senate had adjourned without giving Vice President Garner the necessary authority to sign the resolution in its absence. Hence 24 more hours were left for arms-shippers to ship. Dour must have been the thoughts of Mr. Cuse who had got only some $720,000 of his $2.777,000 worth of war supplies safely away, who could have had a whole day more to load crates left on the dock. Dourer still must have been the thoughts of Mr. Dineley, who had said: "We got this business away from foreign nations and into this country, where there is need for it." Ambassador Ordaz, winging toward Washington, was forced down by bad weather, did not arrive in time to sign the necessary papers and take delivery on Dineley's waiting planes.

*Latest of these, introduced last week by Senator Sheppard of Texas and Representative Lister Hill of Alabama, gives the President power to fix prices on all "needful" commodities, to take control of all "'necessary" industries, to draft civilians for wartime industrial service, etc., etc. The bill would also impose a 95% tax on all income above the previous three-year average.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.