"Operations Proceeding"

A communique from the White House last week could well have read: "Operations are proceeding according to plan--for once." The President was smoothly on his way to carrying through the next tiptoe of his step-by-step policy on World War II--this time by modifying the Neutrality Act.

Weeks of planning had gone into last weeks action. Result: a legislative Blitzkrieg. The President met with Congressional leaders of both parties repeatedly last week, ironing out details. Then he drifted a message.

"Although the arming of merchant ships does not guarantee their safety, it most certainly adds to their safety. In the event of an attack by a raider they have a chance to keep the enemy at a distance until help comes. In the case of an attack by air, they have at least a chance to shoot down the enemy or keep the enemy at such height that it cannot make a sure hit. If it is a submarine . . . [it] can no longer rise to the surface within a few hundred yards and sink the merchant ship by gunfire at its leisure.

". . . It is time for this country to stop playing into Hitler's hands and to unshackle our own."

At the insistence of Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Tom Connally of Texas and toothy, grey-shocked John W. McCormack, House Majority leader, the strategists started the bill through the mill in the House first, thus bypassing the usual dragging delay of the jogging Senate pace. By starting the bill in the House, with a steam roller set to pancake all opposition, the Administration hoped this week to rip the bill through to passage in two days of closed hearings, two more days of limited debate, and shoot the bill over to the Senate by week's end.

House members were still fresh from their month's visit home, whence many a mugwump had crossed over into the interventionist camp, and even fresher from the heaviest victory for any Roosevelt World War II policy move, the crashing 328-67 vote last week for passage of the $5,985,000,000 new Lend-Lease funds. If the House whooped through the Armed-Ships bill, the Senate could not fail to be impressed. This was the strategists' aim.

In secret the Isolationist command--some ten Senators, some 50 House members--met in the Caucus room of the Senate Office Building one night last week, gloomily chewed the bitter cud of defeat, gloomily decided that even a Senate filibuster was out of the question. Missing was their best strategist, Montana's Burton K. Wheeler, who was out beating the bushes for some additional Isolationist recruits.

In the first of the two days of locked-door hearings, Secretary of State Cordell Hull and War Secretary Henry L. Stimson went beyond the President's message.

Each demanded that Congress take a further step: permit U.S. ships to enter combat zones and deliver the goods.

House leaders expected the bill to pass by 80 to 100 votes, hoped then to get to work on getting U.S. ships legally into belligerent ports--their real destinations.

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