History Lesson

While Secretary of State Cordell Hull was last week, as usual, doing his best to avoid stirring up needless international and internal bickerings of any sort (see above), Secretary of War Harry Hines Woodring was giving the Chamber of Commerce of the United States his views on "National Defense." Excerpts:

". . . There seems to be no question that the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in 1931 was the beginning of a chain of events that led directly to much of the present difficulty in which the world finds itself. Four years later Germany announced its adoption of rearmament and conscription in violation of the Treaty of Versailles, and the next year came the occupation of the Rhineland.

"In the same year with German conscription came the Italian attack upon Ethiopia, which was adjudged by the League of Nations a violation of the League Covenant which Italy had signed. This was followed by armed intervention in the civil war in Spain, and finally by the Japanese invasion of China.

"At present, the democracies are strongly pacifistic. They have not always been so. If pressed too far a wave of indignation might sweep over them that would make it extremely difficult to keep the peace. It is essential that continued aggression stop before things get out of hand. . . ."

All this was well-known modern history, but not the sort of thing the Cabinet officers of one nation say about another. The reaction, as expected, was brief and bitter. Said a Foreign Office spokesman for Japan: "Regrettable." Said the semi-official German Deutsche Diplomatisch-Politische Korrespondenz: "The German nation does not want lessons from any quarter on the subject of national freedom, self-determination and its best interests." Wrote Mussolini's spokesman, Virginio Gayda, in Giornale d'Italia: "We should like to believe his words were never uttered, but if they are authentic they constitute a new and exceptional document of provocation by the United States against Italy."

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