No Drifting

North Dakota's isolationist Senator Lynn Joseph Frazier last week intimated that Franklin Roosevelt was playing politics with World War II. Most other Republicans refrained from such crass accusations. Yet one thing was certain: the President was engaged in an extraordinary political operation.

Woodrow Wilson in 1914-17 drifted with the U. S. people until he and they swirled into World War I. When at last he had to act he had the people behind him. In the world of 1939 where Dictators strike fast and hard, a democracy which takes three years to make up its mind is at grave disadvantage. No man (perhaps not even Franklin Roosevelt) could say for certain last week what the President of the U. S. really wanted to do about war.

But all signs pointed to the fact that Franklin Roosevelt had resolved not to let U. S. public opinion drift. In World War I months if not years passed before millions of U. S. citizens began to think in terms of a world struggle. Last week Franklin Roosevelt deliberately set out to hasten the process.

He did so by proclaiming a "limited" emergency. He did so by adding three new members--Loan Administrator Jesse Jones, Works Administrator John M. Carmody, Security Administrator Paul Vories McNutt --to his Cabinet "for the duration of the emergency."* Practically his every act--from announcing that Congress would be called, to ordering increases in Army and Navy--was a reminder to the people of the U. S. that the world is now facing a crisis and that the U. S. will soon have to make decisions. He had begun to play the part of El Hombre, for which South America looked to him (see p. 28).

Franklin Roosevelt's character, and the implication of his preparations both indicated that the decisions which he will ultimately urge for staying out or getting into war will be vigorous if not aggressive./- Whether the public, pushed to a decision, will agree with him is another matter. But last week his advisers believed that he had already won the first round: that Congress when called into session will, filibuster or no filibuster, modify the Neutrality Act to permit export of arms (see p. 10).

> "In order that the nation may not again be caught unaware," the President realigned his executive organization. Within "the White House Office" he grouped his Presidential secretaries (Steve Early, Brigadier General Edwin M. "Pa" Watson); his three administrative assistants (Lauchlin Currie, William McReynolds, James Rowe and his Executive Clerk Rudolph Forster). Into his compact organization he also brought the Budget Bureau; the National Resources Planning Board, a new office "for personnel management" and the National Emergency Council (renamed the Office of Government Reports).

> Moving swiftly to stop rocketing food costs (see p. 64) Franklin Roosevelt suspended import quotas, domestic marketing regulations on sugar, thus lifting all planting and producing restrictions. Cuban producers readied 800,000 tons of sugar for shipment as benefit payments went out the window.

> "In these days of tension ... we must all stand together . . . fulfill our obligations to the nation, regardless of political or partisan considerations," Franklin Roosevelt wrote last week, canceling a political engagement and making Republicans wonder how far non-political national unity is expected to go by 1940.

> After allowing his military advisers to talk out loud about convoying refugees home from Europe with U. S. naval vessels, the President decided that U. S. merchant ships should boldly sail the seas protected only by the careful advertisement of the nationality (see p. 54).

> In announcing a drive on spies, saboteurs and undemocratic propagandists, Franklin Roosevelt bracketed them (for the first time) with Communists. Cracked the London Times's urbane, observant Sir Willmott Lewis: "You could feel the fellow travelers shivering in their shoes."

> Taxed but far from exhausted by two weeks of day-night vigil, the President journeyed to Hyde Park for a weekend rest. With his mother he drove through the rain to St. James Episcopal Church at Hyde Park, where he heard the Rev. Frank R. Wilson denounce Adolf Hitler, read from the Old Testament (Habakkuk, 2:8): ". . . Because thou hast spoiled many nations, all the remnant of the people shall spoil thee."

*Presidents may have whom they please in their Cabinets, customarily have only department Secretaries and the Vice President.

/- The cynical view of many a New Dealer was last week expressed by Kenneth G. Crawford, who wrote in the Nation: "Is the Roosevelt Administration neutral? Certainly not. Is there any chance of the U. S. to stay out of another world war? Practically none. Will the Rooseveit program of liberal reform go on in the event of a general war? It will not. . . . Would the outbreak of a war mean a third term for President Roosevelt? Probably."

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