811.04418/461: Telegram
The Chargé in Germany ( Kirk ) to the Secretary of State
[Received 7:45 p.m.]
598. Department’s circular July 2, 2 p.m. The German press has expressed relatively little interest in the Neutrality Bill passed by the House of Representatives and has confined itself to news accounts of the debate regarding the measure which though perhaps emphasizing the speeches in opposition to the bill sponsored by Representative Bloom are primarily of a factual nature. The headlines over these despatches link the House Neutrality Bill with the failure of the Senate to extend the President’s monetary powers with particular reference to the devaluation of the dollar interpreting both developments [Page 666] as severe setbacks to the administration. Summaries of Secretary Hull’s statement regarding the Neutrality Bill made at his press conference of July 113 written in such a way as to imply derogatory criticism were also published though not prominently.
The most conspicuous comment on the Neutrality Bill thus far noted is contained in the leading editorial in this morning’s Frankfurter Zeitung. Referring to Secretary Hull’s “condemnatory judgment of the form and aims of the newly amended law as presented to him by the authorized representatives of the American people” the editorial states “the antithesis noticeable in the criticism of the man responsible for the conduct of American diplomacy divides the citizenship of the United States in a national matter that may become just as important for the peace of the world as the direct declarant of a cabinet which is entrusted with power over war or peace in a decisive moment”. The paper then sets out to explain what the provisional amendment of the Neutrality Law by the House means to American politics and to international politics and states in part as follows:
“There are two provisions in the House bill which constitute basic departures from the text of the former Neutrality Law namely (a) the restriction of the absolute embargo on exports to ‘deadly weapons’ in case of war and (b) the inclusion of Congress in making the decision of whether a state of war exists and whether accordingly the various provisions of the law are to go into force. In the former respect the new law coincides in part though not entirely with the wishes of President Roosevelt inasmuch as the so-called Pittman Bill proposed complete abolition of the embargo on arms and supplies of American materials to other countries in case of war subject only to the proviso contained in the cash and carry clause.
This clause constituted a unilateral preference for the powers which due to their ample capital and their maritime predominance on the Atlantic Ocean would have been the only ones capable of taking advantage of this possibility. Pittman’s intention—and in that Pittman is merely Roosevelt’s mouthpiece—was precisely to place an inexhaustible arsenal of arms in the United States at the disposal of those very powers i. e. England and France. The House of Representatives put a stop to that (and in this connection the numbers of the votes must be kept well in mind) without quite closing the door to the American market. Accordingly there are certainly distinct limits to the satisfaction which might be experienced here and there at this ‘defeat’ of Roosevelt and his intervention policy.
The distrust of Roosevelt’s foreign policy felt by a large number of Congressmen and expressed by this restriction is even more clearly apparent in the second provision. Until now it was left to the President to determine a state of war and upon so deciding to allow the cognizant provision of the Neutrality Law to become operative. But these full powers for the President also include the possibility—as demonstrated later in the case of the Sino-Japanese conflict—not to [Page 667] afford the law i. e. not to take American ‘neutrality’ as a guide to political action if there were backers of a different nature. As the omission of a declaration of war by Japan to China admitted of the fiction that there was no ‘state of war’—in an international legal sense—the President by not taking advantage of his authority could deny the spirit of the Neutrality Law without violating the letter thereof. Of course limitation of this authority may be determined less by the desire to force the President to apply the law to the conflict in the Far East than by the intention to deprive him of a dangerous tool of his intervention policy in Europe. In fact the provision whereby the President may only pronounce a state of war jointly with the Congress (or not pronounce a state of war which can often be just as important) most clearly expresses doubt of Roosevelt’s foreign political leadership.
Two provisions then and also the slight difference in the number of votes for and against reflect the sentiment of the people which have apparently not yet formed a clear idea of the position of the United States in the world. After the House of Representatives comes the Senate. Inasmuch as opposition against any relaxation of the old law is very strong in the Senate there is still the possibility that the old law will remain and consequently also as far as international relations are concerned an Anglo-French-American ‘alliance’ that bears the vague but yet clearly discernible traits of that law.”
- Department of State Bulletin, July 1, 1939, p. 4.↩