The Masks Drops

The Mask Drops

Last week news of the U. S. in foreign affairs jumped to the crisis category. It began with reports of the State Department's reaction to Japan in Indo-China. It ended with news of a world coalition of totalitarian powers directed, for the first time since the Holy Alliance, against the U. S.

In the first news of Indo-China, there was no preparation for this jump. Since World War II began, U. S. citizens have grown accustomed to a well-grooved pattern of U. S. diplomatic action--condemnations of aggression accompanied, now & then, with reports of new loans to China; the impounding of the assets of conquered nations, together with increasing restrictions on exports to Japan; the strengthening of ties with Latin America, together with reports of increased aid to Great Britain. Such has been the characteristic pattern of U. S. foreign policy: defensive, gloomy, hesitant, and principally concerned with establishing the moral superiority of U. S. democracy in an age of triumphant aggression.

So it was when the U. S. condemned the seizure of Austria, Czecho-Slovakia, Poland, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg and France, the attack on Finland, the absorption of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Albania and Rumania. So it was when Secretary of State Cordell Hull warned Japan, when Holland and France fell, and when The Netherlands East Indies and Indo-China were endangered, that the U. S. would frown upon any change in the status quo in the Pacific.

And so it was last week when the Japanese-French agreement on Indo-China forced U. S. action. There was nothing sensational about Secretary Hull's condemnation of the deal. Nor was it exceptional news when, two days later, Jesse Jones announced an Export-Import Bank loan of $25,000,000 to stabilize Chinese currency--for weeks Financier T. V. Soong has haunted Washington, working for a $100,000,000 loan. There was nothing out of the ordinary when President Roosevelt next decreed a complete embargo on shipments of scrap iron and steel to Japan. In the midst of these moves, whose only distinction was that they were coming more rapidly than in the past, U. S. citizens read that Japan, Germany, Italy had signed a ten-year pact to protect the "new order" in Europe and Asia, to pledge mutual assistance in case another power (i.e., the U. S.) became involved in the European or Asiatic war.

Tension. U. S. reaction was a little like that of a man winning a game of tennis who discovers that his opponent has dropped his racket and pulled out a gun. In Washington Secretary Hull stepped into his press conference, leaned on the back of his chair, and asked, "Are there any questions this morning, gentlemen?" From his pocket he extracted his familiar pince-nez with the heavy black ribbon, put them on, and read a prepared statement: "The reported alliance does not . . . substantially alter a situation which has existed for several years. Announcement of the alliance merely makes clear to all a relationship which has long existed in effect and to which this Government has repeatedly called attention.

"That such an agreement has been in process of conclusion has been well known for some time, and that fact has been fully taken into account . . . in the determination of this country's policies."

New York Timesman Frank Kluckhohn asked when and in what manner the U. S. had called attention to the relationship of Germany-Italy-Japan. With less than his usual benignity, Cordell Hull replied, "I would rather not be cross-examined on the subject this morning." State Department position was that the long sequence of statements, comments, speeches and twilight analyses of the peaceful objectives of democracy had somehow educated the U. S. to the common aims of the totalitarian powers. Privately the State Department's experts said that the German-Italian-Japanese Pact was the diplomatic blunder of the age. Their reasoning: it dropped the mask of totalitarian indifference toward the U. S. It ended U. S. isolationism. It vindicated the U. S. policy of all aid to Britain short of war. It made unnecessary six months of State Department "education" of U. S. public opinion on the immensity of the menace facing the U. S.

Public Opinion. U. S. citizens facing the fact that the U. S. was now, except for besieged Britain, isolated in a hostile world, showed no disposition to quarrel with the U. S. State Department, with U. S. foreign policy. Critics of that policy, like the Baltimore Sun, dropped their criticism, stoically observed:

"Whether we like it or not, the world is rapidly dividing itself into two hostile camps, with Germany, Italy, Japan and their satellites in one camp and the United States and Great Britain and their satellites--most of them military liabilities rather than assets--in the other. . . . Our present hope is that the Administration . . . has borne in mind that war with Japan at this time would clearly serve the purposes of Herr Hitler and make more difficult than before the task of Great Britain."

Walter Lippmann saw the move as a confirmation of the U. S. policy of aiding Britain. Major George Fielding Eliot listed countermoves that the U. S. could make:

>> A complete U. S.-British embargo on shipments to Japan.

>> Reopening of the Burma road to supply China, economic pressure on Thailand.

>> Increased aid to China; increased U. S. naval strength in the Far East to block a possible Japanese grab; a joint U. S.British protectorate over The Netherlands East Indies; expansion of the naval base at Port Darwin. "By this series of steps the Japanese are confronted with an insoluble problem . . . from which they can escape in only one of two ways: by establishing a moderate Government which will completely readjust the whole Far Eastern scene, or by coming forth to wage war under conditions insuring their defeat."

Dorothy Thompson wrote: "It is not and never has been a question of whether the British Empire needs us; it is a question of whether we need the British Empire. We do. . . . If Britain is defeated, we shall be alone against the world." Sumner Welles defended U. S. foreign policy to members of the Cleveland Foreign Affairs Council, indicated an important development in U. S.-Latin-American collaboration to meet the Pact. There were rumors:

>> That the U. S. would extend the embargo to Japan to petroleum supplies. (Counter-argument--such a move would force a Japanese grab for the oil fields in The Netherlands East Indies before U. S.British strategy for protecting them has been coordinated.)

>> That the U. S. would work for a complete embargo by all countries in the Western Hemisphere on trade with Japan.

>> That the U. S. would trade more military equipment to Britain--principally Flying Fortresses--in return for Asiatic bases.

Strangest reaction was that, although Soviet Russia's place in the new "world order" was fixed in the German-Italian-Japanese Pact, talk bubbled up in the U. S. of a U. S.-Russian agreement. The New York Daily News, damning Communism as usual, observed, "It would seem [that] . . . the most sensible thing we could do would be to scout around for some more friends--powerful friends--if such can be found. . . . Some of you folks had better shut your eyes and hold your noses, because we refer to Soviet Russia."

Criticism. U. S. criticism of U. S. foreign policy might have been less muted if foreign criticism had been less loud. Few U. S. citizens wanted to damn Cordell Hull while Japanese papers boasted that one effect of the Pact would be to discredit the State Department. Few wanted to hammer at obvious miscalculations in foreign affairs while Spanish papers boasted of an eventual return to Spain of the Philippines, of a restoration of the "Spanish world" in South America.

Yet the pattern of U. S. diplomatic action--its embargoes, condemnations of aggression, its unhopeful, dogged, almost whispered insistence on the moral superiority of democracy--obviously looked mechanical, uninspired, unresourceful, compared to the boldness and audacity of totalitarian action. From the number of critics of different persuasions who seemed to think that the U. S. had paid too much attention to educating "laggard public opinion" instead of really mending U. S. fences, it began to look as if the laggard opinion was in the State Department.

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