extract that Mr. Fish had, in the manufacture in arsenals and shipyards under our jurisdiction. Any defense article is permitted to put us into the war without manpower, isn't it? As I understand, you have no objection to that?

General JOHNSON. In the first place, you stated that I said that I was for everything that was in this bill.

Mr. SHANLEY. When I say that, I am endeavoring to get your understanding of it.

General JOHNSON. I am for almost nothing in this bill as it stands. Mr. SHANLEY. No; I said you are for the purposes of this bill, except for the mechanics of it, and I wanted to go into detail.

General JOHNSON. I am not. I am against the principle of this bill, which is much broader than any question of mechanics.

Mr. SHANLEY. But you are for all aid short of war to England? General JOHNSON. I have stated, over and over again, that I am for such aid as will insure the defense of the United States, and not for one inch more.

Mr. SHANLEY. Have you been able to make up your mind just where that aid stops and where it continues? For example, take the torpedo boats that we have been helping England with; is that "short of war?" The exchange of these destroyers-was that "short of war?"

General JOHNSON. I am not going to get into a discussion of what is short of war and of international law as it stood before this war, because it is out the window. We are on new ground. We have got to chart a new course.

Mr. SHANLEY. I grant that, but you have got to know what is short of war, if we are going to write this bill?

General JOHNSON. I am not going to be confused by words. What has got to be done here is to maintain the United States in a position of impregnable defense, and not to foreclose our future defense by putting us into a position where we have underwritten the conduct of a war by a belligerent whom we cannot control; and that is what this bill does.

Mr. SHANLEY. We cannot put a glittering generality like that in the bill and expect to aid England, or not get a boy

General JOHNSON. I do not ask for any "glittering generality". I ask for a specific delegation of authority.

Mr. SHANLEY. We are asking you. Now, you say you know this bill-you know it by heart. Take this section

To manufacture in arsenals, factories, and shipyards under their jurisdiction, or otherwise procure, any defense article for the government of any country whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States.

Are you for that?

General JOHNSON. Yes; of course.

He has got it now. The words

you read did not include any other notion. You said he had authority to manufacture in the arsenals any defense article.

Mr. SHANLEY. Yes. Do you know what a "defense article" is, the definition of it?

General JOHNSON. Yes, sir.

Mr. SHANLEY. Does not that include belligerent defense articles, too?

General JOHNSON. Not in a definition of "defense articles," at all. It later makes a definition of "defense articles" in that category, and

the President is then authorized some other way, but that is a very different thing from what you are stating.

Mr. SHANLEY. As a matter of fact, he may take a torpedo boat and manufacture it in this country; it may go out on the high seas and be in the belligerent's service, and then come back here to be rebuilt. isn't that so, under the bill?

General JOHNSON. Well, I think he would have to transfer the crew, if he sent it out and delivered it to a belligerent.

Mr. SHANLEY. But he may do that? That is the methodGeneral JOHNSON. Under that bill, yes; he can give away anything, and he can give away the battleship Oklahoma, tomorrow, if he wants

to.

Mr. SHANLEY. I am not talking about giving away, as to things. I am talking about that particular case, where he is enabled to do something, that he was never able to do before; that is, to bring in a boat, or aircraft, or any other vessel in the service of a belligerent, to bring them into our harbors and be able to refit it, under the provisions of this bill, and you are in favor of that?

General JOHNSON. I never said any such thing.

Mr. SHANLEY. Well, I did not understand your testimony.

General JOHNSON. I made it as clear as I know how, and I do not think I can make it any clearer. However, I will be glad to clarify any gap that your mind has, that is obscure, but I am not willing to have you state what I said, which I do not believe I did say, and then ask me a hypothetical question based on a wrong assumption.

Mr. SHANLEY. I asked you, did you want to go into the whole detail, but I said, in giving the President the power to bring into our shipyards vessels which we had previously sold and which were brought into belligerent service. That is not hypothetical, because this is actually what is going to happen, and then to bring those vessels back here as belligerent vessels, to be able to repair them and to rebuild them, as in subsection (1) of section 3.

General JOHNSON. If you mean that this bill makes the navy yards, within the discretion of the President, available to belligerent naval vessels, which is a violation of neutrality law as it was known before, the answer is yes, the bill does that.

Mr. SHANLEY. And you are for that?
General JOHNSON. I have not said so.
Mr. SHANLEY. Well, are you for it?

General JOHNSON. I do not know. I have not given that particular element of this bill a great deal of thought. That is a very complicated question. We already have a joint naval base with Great Britain in the South Pacific. I do not know what these Caribbean and Newfoundland naval bases are. That is a very small question on this whole big question we are considering here.

Mr. SHANLEY. You think it is small?

General JOHNSON. Yes; I think it is small.

Mr. SHANLEY. But we have to pass upon it. Now, let us take that second question, under the subsequent part of section 3, where the President is enabled to "sell, transfer, exchange, lease, lend, or otherwise dispose of, to any such government any defense article." Are you for that?

General JOHNSON. No, I am not, as I have clearly stated.

Mr. SHANLEY. Under the present law, are you for a provision which allows him to do that, provided it is necessary for the defense of this Government, and that is certified by the Chief of Naval Operations, or the Chief of Staff of the Army?

General JOHNSON. What are you talking about-that part of the bill that authorizes an exchange?

Mr. SHANLEY. No, we are talking about the statute laws, now.
General JOHNSON. What law?

Mr. SHANLEY. "No weapon," "no military weapon of this country can be sold" to anybody, or can be disposed of, unless it is approved by the Chief of Staff, or the Chief of Naval Operations.

General JOHNSON. It has to do with obsolete vessels, only, and hasn't anything to do with the vessels in active service. Of course, I think frankly the obsolete question has been stressed, but that has nothing to do with it.

Mr. SHANLEY. Under the Attorney General's decision?

General JOHNSON. With which I do not agree, and which I think overlooks several statutes in absolute opposition to it, in arriving at the decision, which squeezed authority under one statute without considering others.

Mr. SHANLEY. But you have to further guess whether, if it were possible to get that before the Supreme Court, they would declare that constitutional, and we have to make that guess, too.

General JOHNSON. All right. Under your argument, they can do any of these things any way, and then just get the Attorney General to write an opinion, and it is O. K.

Mr. SHANLEY. On the contrary, I disagree with the Attorney General's opinion.

General JOHNSON. So do I, so we are in agreement on one thing. Mr. SHANLEY. We are, on that. Now, the whole question, as I understand it and I will try to make this as brief as we can-that there is in your mind--and I do not want to quote you, unless I have this that you do not know what those methods are, "short of war, that nobody knows. To be specific, let us suppose you want to aid England. Let us suppose that in the North Atlantic the British are suffering so desperately in their shipping that they need submarines. Let us suppose that we have continually obsolete submarines that we could transfer to them. Are you against the transfer of those submarines?

General JOHNSON. I tried to say that I am unwilling any longer to confine my thinking to the old terms of international law, because I think they are "out the window."

Mr. SHANLEY. Well, we will assume that. Go ahead.

General JOHNSON. I am not going to give you a definition as to what we could do in all circumstances. My only position is, and I want to emphasize it again, that we maintain ourselves in readiness, not to get into this thing, until we know "which way the cat is going to jump," and which is best for us. I do not know what Russia is going to do. I do not know what Japan is going to do. People talk about the totalitarian states walking all over the world. There never has been the rise of power that did not result in the rise of contrary power, and many of them are in existence today. It is a Kilkenny cat fight, and I want to keep out of it and keep so strong that nothing that could happen could interfere with us.

Mr. SHANLEY. But this bill permits the President of the United States in the emergency, or in the hypothetical case that I used, to send these submarines. Are you in favor of that?

General JOHNSON. I say I am not going to take up each one of these suppositious cases and answer them separately. I am for keeping out of the war, and the man in the street, and the man in this Congress, and almost anybody who has followed that knows just about what that is; not within definite limits, but in general; yes.

Mr. SHANLEY. Suppose that in these days we are trying to give Britain aid short of war, and it comes to a point where we have got our defense keyed up, as "Joe" Kennedy said he wanted to aid the British; it will take time, but suppose this time factor has lapsed and we find ourselves 100 percent defended, at the peak, but, with all our methods short of war, failed to aid England, and England was falling; what would you do then?

General JOHNSON. Of course, what you are asking is just a lot of suppositions on a case that does not exist now-is not before us. I do not know what I would do; but I know this-that I would act only in the interests of the defense of the United States, on this hemisphere. I would do no act that accomplished anything that I could foresee or would draw me into any other position. If we are not very careful we are going to be in this war, in 30 to 90 days, possibly on the north coast of Africa or the west coast of Africa. Those things I do not think any single man ought to have authority to do.

Mr. SHANLEY. Well, is there anything in this bill that would draw us in, or accentuate those?

General JOHNSON. Except that it is just like a snowball rolling downhill. It is another big jump down the avalanche way, and I am not for taking it now. I am for waiting to see what our position would be in the future.

Mr. SHANLEY. Then you would not have a bill at this time?

General JOHNSON. I have told you over and over again that I would have a bill, and definitely; and precisely the kind of bill that I would have.

Mr. SHANLEY. I understood you to say that you did not have time, you had to get a column out-it would take you 8 hours, to write a bill for us.

General JOHNSON. If you mean writing a bill, writing the words in their detail, there is no confusion in anybody's mind but yours about what I said.

Mr. SHANLEY. Thank you.
The CHAIRMAN. Mrs. Rogers.

That is all.

Mrs. ROGERS. General Johnson, I think you may perhaps feel that you have answered at least part of these questions that I am going to ask, first, but I would very much like to have your answers again. Considerable has been said about Congress having power over appropriations relative to this bill. If this bill be passed in its present form, the President would have the power to give away any defense article possessed by the United States. And when this occurred Congress would have no other choice but to make appropriations to replace the defense equipment given away. This condition could go on and on. Do you think that, this condition existing, Congress has any free control over appropriations under this bill?

General JOHNSON. I do not read the bill as you interpret it. I do not think that there is any obligation in the bill that if the President gave away a battleship, for example, the Congress would be in duty bound to appropriate for a replacement.

Mrs. ROGERS. Well, of course, so far as the national defense became involved, would it not, General Johnson?

General JOHNSON. Not any more than it is to provide six new battleships.

Mrs. ROGERS. If the President, for instance, goes out and orders six new battleships, and places orders with commercial firms or anywhere else, there would be a moral obligation on the Congress to appropriate for those commitments, would there not?

General JOHNSON. I do not believe so. I think that there are several statutes that prohibit an executive officer from committing the United States without appropriation, are there not-except in certain deficiency provisions?

Mrs. ROGERS. I think under this bill the President would have power to go out and make those commitments.

General JOHNSON. I do not so read it. I may be mistaken. I think it does say that in case he sells anything and the money comes into the United States Treasury, that instead of going into the general fund it goes into a revolving fund to replace equipment of that class, but that is the only thing sounding in that gallery that I know about.

Mrs. ROGERS. But it would only be common sense, then, for the President to secure that equipment, and for the Congress to appropriate for the things that he orders or sells or leases?

General JOHNSON. I think no more than it is common sense for the Congress to appropriate for all-out defense now.

Mrs. ROGERS. You are yourself in sympathy with the principle of honeur oblige and freedom of action?

General JOHNSON. I hope so.

Mrs. ROGERS. You believe this committee should be kept fully informed as to every international situation, as it arises? The press, you know very well, gives us a great deal of information, but I should imagine some things are censored, coming out of England; certainly, out of Germany. If our State Department, for instance, has valuable information, should not this committee be given the benefit of it?

General JOHNSON. In executive session. There are many things that should not be said generally, of course. I am astonished that in the consideration of this bill, where so much depends upon questions of technical strategy and tactics and logistics, I have not seen any professional soldiers or sailors before this committee.

Mrs. ROGERS. You feel it would be very helpful if we should call some of them?

General JOHNSON. If they were allowed to talk; yes.

Mrs. ROGERS. Our generals of the Army and our admirals of the Navy, and others?

General JOHNSON. Well, they are supposed to be the people who know. I do not know who else does.

Mrs. ROGERS. General Johnson, is it not true that a Secretary of War, or any other high Government official, always resigns if he is not in accord with the policy of the President?