Catastrophic?

Last week, with the Japanese still stuttering in astonishment over the abrogation of the 1911 treaty (TIME, Feb. 5), Columnist Walter Lippmann took a good look at U. S. Far East policy. What he saw he viewed with alarm. A good part of the responsibility for what he saw he placed squarely on one man: Senator Arthur Vandenberg.

A strict isolationist, Senator Vandenberg helped lead the Senate opposition last October to repeal of the arms embargo.

And yet, wrote Mr. Lippmann in his column, it was his resolution, introduced in July, which prepared the way for the abrogation of the 1911 treaty with Japan--"the longest step on the road to war that the U. S. has taken since President Wilson announced in 1915 that he would hold the German Government to strict accountability for its acts."

The Vandenberg resolution, Lippmann pointed out: 1) imposed a serious threat (of embargo) on Japan; 2) proposed collective action with Great Britain, France, Italy, China, The Netherlands, Belgium and Portugal against Japan in the Pacific, "at the very moment when Senator Vandenberg was telling the people here that it made no vital difference to them if the Allies were defeated in Europe"; 3) put the U. S. in the position of recklessly challenging a great power.

Senator Vandenberg politely demurred, handed over the entire credit for U. S. Far Eastern policy to the Administration.

Said he: a Democratic President and his State Department were never controlled by his Republican initiative; his reso lution was a "relatively pacific alternative" to the urging of Administration Senators* that a one-sided embargo be clamped on Japan.

* Notably Nevada's Key Pittman.

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