Sunday, March 17, 1940

DALADIER WINS CONFIDENCE VOTE, BUT... If there’s anything good coming out of Finland’s capitulation to Russia, it’s that the Finnish disaster could be opening French eyes a bit to how desultory Allied strategy has become. On the other hand, there’s not a lot of indication that the French plan to actually do anything about it -- yet.

The French Senate met in secret session on Thursday and Friday, prompted by what P.J. Philip in the New York Times described as “the failure of the Allies to give timely and effective aid to Finland.” But Mr. Philip adds that the agenda covered a lot more than Finland -- “the organization of the command of both land and air forces in France, the war policy of the government, its diplomatic action, the activity of Hitler’s Communist agents and the reasons why the League of Nations had not been called on to do something about the sinking of neutral ships.”

Premier Daladier easily survived a confidence vote, 240-0, but there were 60 abstentions. Further, the Associated Press reports from Paris that Daladier may be forced to give up his War Portfolio and all his other cabinet posts save the premiership. Former Premier Laval led the criticism at Thursday’s session, and on Friday it was disclosed that large quantities of the war materials which the Allies had donated to Finland were still sitting on railroad sidings in Norway and Sweden, far away from the now-defeated Finns. But in the end, the Senate voted confidence in the government to prosecute the war “with growing energy.” One can only hope there are some concrete plans, as yet undisclosed, as to how that’s going to be put into practice.

A GROWING U.S.-BRITISH RIFT? “Protect us from a German victory and an American peace.” That’s a comment heard in London by C.B.S. correspondent Edward Murrow, and quoted on one of his recent radio talks. Mr. Murrow spoke at length the other night on British suspicions that the U.S. is permitting arms sales to the Allies not out of sympathy for the Anglo-French cause, but instead to turn a tidy profit. They point out that for all the American expressions of support for Finland, the Roosevelt administration allowed increasing sales of war supplies to Soviet Russia -- this in spite of Secretary of State Hull’s declaration of a “moral embargo” on Stalin’s regime.

The British claim to be “never quite sure just what an American move or statement means,” says Mr. Murrow. And Britons are skeptical of President Roosevelt’s motives in sending Under Secretary Welles across Europe on an alleged peace mission. They assert that a negotiated peace with Hitler would be nothing but a “supercolossal Munich,” and recall how much Americans criticized Prime Minister Chamberlain for the Czech agreement. And there’s Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy’s allegedly gloomy assessment of Allied chances in the war, which Mr. Murrow says is another target of British resentment.

According to last night’s broadcast by C.B.S.’s Berlin reporter, William Shirer, the German official news agency DNB has put out a gleeful dispatch concerning Ambassador Kennedy for foreign consumption. The story was put together from reports abroad to the effect that the Ambassador was in “disfavor” among officials of the Chamberlain government, for his report to President Roosevelt taking a “dark view” of Allies’ chances in this war. (Time magazine reported last week that Mr. Kennedy placed Germany’s chances of winning the war at 55-45).

THE U.S. IS AT FAULT, NOT THE ALLIES. As the New York Herald Tribune reports in Friday’s editions about the half a million Finns made homeless by the Russian takeover of territories ceded under the peace agreement, columnist Dorothy Parker complains that their woes are due not to inaction by the Allies, but the unwillingness of the U.S. to offer serious help --

“The greatest neutral in the world, supported by the overwhelming sympathies of its own population, refused to do anything of any vital importance to aid neutral Finland. Congressional debate greatly encouraged the Russians and the Germans to believe that no matter what happened, the United States would not even risk a really useful dollar....Mr. Roosevelt this morning (Thursday) praises the valor of the Finns and says, ‘The ending of this war does not yet clarify the inherent right of small nations to the maintenance of their integrity.’ This column differs with the President. Whatever is proved or not proved, the position of small nations in the world as it is at present is clarified. They have no position.”

With much bitterness, Miss Thompson sees a bright spot -- “Wall Street regards this as a great Russian-German victory. It is betting that the Germans and/or the Russians will win the war. This fact greatly encourages this column, which was also very depressed concerning the larger issues. For Wall Street’s betting has been so uniformly wrong in the last six years that its defeatism over the Allies ought to make stocks go up in London and Paris. Wall Street was betting in June that there was not going to be any war.”