Show events of past two weeks lead to definite fixation of american foreign policy hot battle continues in congress over isolation and Protect he theories of foreign policy in theory meetings of the senate military affairs committee are usually supposed to be strictly secret in practice information about what goes on at the conclaves usually starts leaking out immediately after they are over senators are only human and like anyone else with important special knowledge in their minds they have a hard time keeping it ii to themselves the recent meeting between the president and this committee at the white house was supposed to be even more secret than most even the stenographers were excluded but as usual the leaks were much in evidence the next day an account was widely published to the effect that the president had stated in conversation that americas frontier was in france and that this explained the U S governments willingness to have the french buy big quantities of war planes here still another account stated that the president had gone farther yet and said that our frontier was the rhine river two days later the chief executive branded these reports as a deliberate lie and added that a move was on foot supported by some congressmen and newspapers to misrepresent and discredit him but whatever the truth of the matter the episode served to unloose a veritable torrent of oratory in the always talkative congress and served as well to brin bring into sharp focus the fundamental fundament 1 differences feren ces that exist over our foreign policy we are embarking on the largest armament program in our peacetime peace time history and when a country builds a war machine it involves far more than merely appropriating the money increasing increasing the personnel of our fighting for forces and placing the orders with the arms and munitions makers it involves efte gravest question of policy it involves our entire attitude toward the relations with the other nations in the world and it thus very directly involves every person in the country protect democracies we have apparently reached thi the time when our foreign policy must be definitely fixed and established in one way or another and this is going to be no simple matter for the congress seems to be bitterly divided over what our policy should be and it is not in any sense a partisan division politic pla plays s little or no part in it an on the one hand are those who believe sincerely hut talat in in a sense we are our brothers keeper that as the only great democrat demo crac immune from immediate attack by a powerful totalitarian state il ii is up to us to throw the weight ol of our influences and resources behind the menaced democracies these men see the world as a great battleground in which an undeclared war without quarter is taking place between fascism and democracy the cause of democracy in europe they reason will soon be lost unless helped by the new world democracy and if that happens they argue we will be next in line for fascist aggression so they conclude the thing to do is 19 to help the old world democracies stave off fascism before it is too late isolation policy the other school believes with equal sincerity in rigorous isolation that means a policy of treating all countries democratic or totalitarian with equal consideration they may feel we must build up an adequate defensive military machine and keep our resources for our own use they favor our strengthening not wea weakening our neutrality policy it is not our business they argue to pull any count rys fat out of the fire and they conclude if we insist on ai air ing democracies with moral buas ion and giving them access to ou cla factories and resources it wi eventually mean that we will have to aid them with our arms army and navy president wilsons Wil sons to be neutral they think and obvious bias toward the allies was responsible for bringing us unnecessarily into the world war this illustrates the two major extremes of thought there are of course many more mode ate groups which favor a modified neutrality or a modified internationalism no ono one can answer tha question of which side will win mr roosevelt it is believed feels that neutrality must be somewhat relaxed on the other hand there is a strong and determined group in in congress led by senator dorall which is determined to resist t ohp end and administration a ef fort to actively aid the Euro european peir democracies at this time it look like a tc is in project over foreign policy outlook the business picture is chan changing but little the anticipated anticipate d downswing remains in evid evidence and is characterized by beriou er iou losses in security values one good sign is sustained strength in commodity pric prices es they have declined but to nowhere near the same extent as stock prices and there seems to be no danger of a big break in this field the inventory situation is also favorable the economists ara acs resting esting on their oars now co confident afi uen t that spring will bring lne much advertis adv d upturn |