World at the Fireside

For the 43 minutes that Franklin Delano Roosevelt spoke last week, the little grove of microphones on the desk before him were the ears of the whole world: of 65 millions of U.S. citizens, many more millions across the oceans. Never before had the metaphor of "fireside chat" seemed so inadequate.

The first definitive statement of U.S. foreign policy in the world today was not one but a three-gun salvo, directed not only toward Europe, but toward Latin America and Asia as well. At week's end, as near as spotters could judge, the score was one direct hit, one dud, one hit with a time fuse that had yet to explode.

Direct hit was the verbal shell that the President aimed at the Axis with the promise of U.S. aid in the Battle of the Atlantic. Doing their best to minimize the effectiveness of the speech, Germany and Italy charged that the U.S. was playing an "imperialistic" game, trying to prolong the war, to drag Latin America into it by the heels. Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, Nazis said, had answered Roosevelt before he spoke by declaring that U.S. convoys of British ships would be "an act of war."

Less than convincing were the shoulder-shruggings of the Axis, particularly since, as the week progressed, German and Italian spokesmen grew sorer by the minute, called the speech "hypocritical," "nonsensical," "demagogic," "plethoric."*

In Britain the President's promise of aid was a hit in another sense, brought a great surge of relief throughout the British Commonwealth, plus a small eddy of wishes that he had gone even farther. By no accident two days later Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden came out with a statement of the British Government's war aims. A definition of the kind of peace Britain wants would be a primary condition of U.S. collaboration.

As a definition, Eden's talk was a little too general for dictionary use, laid its chief emphasis on international "social security," economic cooperation between nations, without specifying the form it would take. As to Germany's place in Britain's Free Europe, there was more than an echo of Versailles. "We must never forget that Germany is the worst master Europe has yet known. Five times in the last century she has violated the peace. She must never be in a position to play that role again."

Dud. Not entirely unexpected but definitely disappointing was the effect of Mr. Roosevelt's plea for hemisphere solidarity, based on the common threat of Nazi domination. Little to the taste of most Latin Americans is the black picture of Nazi invasion which the President drew, but by week's end it was obvious that the idea of signing up with the U.S. and Britain for a difficult and dubious war was even less appetizing. Only in Mexico, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Cuba were reactions to the speech as favorable as in the U.S. and Canada. But in none of the American republics was there open opposition to the President's speech, except in the Nazi press. Officially and non-officially, South and Central America applauded President Roosevelt in temperate language. Typical was Argentina's Acting President Ramon S. Castillo who, the day after Roosevelt spoke, "reaffirmed" Argentina's neutrality, declared that Argentina was friendly to all nations.

Time Fuse. Twice in his long talk the President mentioned China. Not once in his arraignment of the Axis did he speak of Axis-Partner Japan. According to credible Washington reports, the omission was pointed.

Japanese were audibly relieved by the speech's "unexpected moderation." Tokyo's stockmarket zoomed after an anticipatory slump. Newspapers came out with the suggestion that Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka, "who was able to conclude a neutrality pact with Russia in twelve minutes," be sent scurrying to Washington to work out a settlement of the Chinese war.

Matsuoka and the militarists did not like this at all, spent the week pointing out that, whatever Mr. Roosevelt had or had not said, the U.S. was sending increasing aid to Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek.

In a running series of interviews, they insisted that Japan was irrevocably tied to the Axis, that if the U.S. went to war with Germany it would mean war with Japan as well. Said Matsuoka of U.S. reports that Japan was hedging on its Axis ties: "It is an absurd misconception . . . absolutely impossible to imagine that Japan should fail in the slightest degree faithfully to carry out her obligations under the treaty." That the President's treatment of the Far Eastern situation was loaded with delayed-action high explosive was even clearer in Chungking. Before the week's end: 1) Chungking announced that it had already received the first shipments of $100,000,000 worth of U.S. war supplies; 2) U.S, Secretary of State Cordell Hull, in a letter to China's new Foreign Minister Dr. Quo Taichi, promised that the U.S. would take steps to give up all extraterritorial rights in post-war China--an answer to Japan's propaganda which declares that Japan's New Order in Asia alone will restore the Orient to Orientals. If Japan really wanted a peaceful Far Eastern settlement, it could carry on from there.

* More Axis adjectivity: "defamatory, provocative, warmongering, fantastic, tactless, confused, senseless, unprovable, unconvincing, unfair, foggy, equivocal, subtle, alarmist, aggressive, apocalyptic."

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