Off-Base

Franklin Roosevelt toiled late aboard the U. S. S. Tuscaloosa as it carved the midnight waves to Red Bank, N. J. last week. Fog and finicky fish had spoiled his vacation cruise to Newfoundland. Now another European convulsion had ended it a day early. Franklin Roosevelt sat up late working on an idea of his own: a peace plea to King Vittorio Emmanuele III of Italy, who was trout fishing in the Alps.

Debarking in the morning, his body clad in soiled seersucker, his mind in deep anxiety, this President who needs only a world peace crown to make him perhaps the most memorable ever, did not tell the press what he had done. When he reached Washington, Mr. Roosevelt saw his State Department chiefs, Cordell Hull and Sumner Welles. Before dinner they also drafted and dispatched appeals to Adolf Hitler and Poland's President Ignace Moscicki. But Mr. Roosevelt warned correspondents that his next morning's press conference would probably yield no major news. At the conference, he referred almost sarcastically to his "lovely hope" for peace.

In addressing King Vittorio Emmanuele, Mr. Roosevelt avoided the cold shoulder Benito Mussolini gave him last April, played for the hold the Italian Crown has upon the Italian People. He urged again the international discussions, military and economic, which he had proposed before. He added this note, which chimed with the Pope's plea: "The Government of Italy and the United States can today advance those ideals of Christianity which of late seem so often to have been obscured" (in Germany and Russia).

To Herr Hitler and Mr. Moscicki he suggested three ways of settling their difficulty: direct negotiation, arbitration by an impartial umpire, conciliation (compromise) through the good offices of a neutral in Europe or the Americas. He reminded Herr Hitler that his last message had gone unanswered, and warned: "The people of the United States are as one in their opposition to policies of military conquest and domination. They are as one in rejecting the thesis that any ruler, or any people, possess the right to achieve their ends . . . through . . . action which will plunge countless millions of people into war . . . bring distress and suffering to every nation of the world. ..."

The absence of any sharp new angle, any strong new drive in Mr. Roosevelt's messages reflected the fact that he and his Cabinet (only Messrs. Hull. Murphy, Woodring, Edison and Ickes were at hand) had been caught off-base with the rest of the world by the Hitler-Stalin deal, the sudden push for Poland. When President Moscicki replied to Mr. Roosevelt that Poland was willing to negotiate, Mr. Roosevelt forwarded that word to Herr Hitler, but without much hope of getting action. Berlin's unofficial comment was that Mr. Roosevelt's words had, as usual, arrived when Der Fuehrer was asleep.

So Franklin Roosevelt settled down to supervise his sub-Cabinet's preparations to cushion war-shock for U. S. citizens, money and markets (see col. 3). He pondered addressing Joseph Stalin as an added effort, with the backing of other American republics, but held his hand. It seemed he had fired for peace all the ammunition left in his locker. Next move would be to recall Congress, ask it to revise Neutrality. But that move he could not well take before actual war broke and its form was known. Meantime, should formal war be declared, he was bound to withhold from its angers all U. S. weapons (above calibre .22) and ammunition, from pistols through planes, motors and warships to flamethrowers, to the belligerents.

For guidance in the crisis Franklin Roosevelt relied last week on as extraordinary a brace of diplomats as any U. S. President has ever had on a serious diplomatic battlefield. His favorite sentinel abroad is Ambassador to France Bill Bullitt: bald, slim, elegant, as close a student of all Europe as was that other rich Philadelphian, Dr. Benjamin Franklin. By placement more important now is autonomous Joe Kennedy in London: hearty, gum-chewing, tough-minded as Bismarck. Both have achieved in almost unprecedented measure the confidence of the Governments and the peoples to whom they are accredited. Neither France nor Great Britain has for years had a man who could hold a candle to these two. Last week Britain sent a new man. To replace moose-tall, affable but awkward

Sir Ronald Lindsay, they sent 57-year-old Philip Henry Kerr, Marquess of Lothian, owner of 28,000 English and Scottish acres, onetime journalist, Wartime secretary to David Lloyd George. He is an ambitious man who long ago "arrived" in British affairs by hard work. Accused (he denies it) of being a member of the famed, talkative Cliveden Set and of having helped oust Anthony Eden, he favored appeasement until he lost belief in Adolf Hitler's humanity. Then he favored a British military alliance with Russia. Now he may confidently be counted in Britain's war-if-necessary party. Quick-eyed, anxious to seem hearty and flexible, eager to dispel the aura of his title by democratic .manners, expected to travel and speak more than Sir Ronald did, his assignment (in cold fact) is to follow up on the visit of King George & Queen Mary, align the U. S. as close as may be behind an Empire whose back is close to the wall. His hope: "To do half as well as Joe Kennedy has."

>Last time the German juggernaut rolled, it went through Luxembourg, the tiny (999 sq. mi.) independent duchy tucked in between Belgium and France on the German border. Last week Luxembourg's ruler, Grand Duchess Charlotte, 43, was at home, with Europe shaking around her. At the White House as weekend guests (she has no Washington embassy) arrived her husband, sporting Prince Consort Felix, and their son. Prince Jean, 19. Besides wild boars, a favorite hobby of Prince Felix is the big Luxembourg radio station (strongest west of Moscow) and which, should the juggernaut roll again, would surely be extracted by Germany as thorn from flesh.

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