Mrs. ROGERS. It does not mention a statement to Congress.

Mr. JOHNSON. This is the information. It will all be available to the Congress.

Mrs. ROGERS. I had a feeling that the Comptroller General would be the best person, and not that he would interfere with that. I wonder if the Ambassador does not agree with me?

Mr. KENNEDY. I feel strongly that whatever department is set up is entirely a question of administration.

The CHAIRMAN. Proceed, Mrs. Rogers.

Mrs. ROGERS. The Secretary of the Treasury here a few days ago, Mr. Ambassador, mentioned certain assets of Great Britain in Central and South America. There were British Government assets, if Britain should fall, and I agree with you, Mr. Ambassador, that we must do all we can to prevent such a tragedy because the Nazis then could gain control within a week of these public utilities, and railways and so forth as well as private British assets in Central and South America and Canada and Mexico. Is not that a real possibility and they could obtain a vital foothold, that is the Nazis could obtain a vital foothold in this part of the Western Hemisphere? Mr. KENNEDY. I did not read the Secretary's testimony. But I did not quite understand, just as you read it, I do not know how the Nazis will get control of these various interests in South America. Does that mean he will get possession of the stock certificates?

Mrs. ROGERS. Of the stock certificates. I do not mean the taking over of the running of them.

Mr. KENNEDY. I would think, if we are carrying on any arrangements with South America, that stock certificates as heretofore have been thrown out the window when necessary and they could be thrown out the window again. I cannot imagine the United States carrying on a good-neighbor policy with South America and permitting anybody to come into South America that was hostile to the interests of the United States.

Mrs. ROGERS. But would it not be better for us and even for Great Britain and South America to have us have the title or hold it in trust?

Mr. KENNEDY. I see no objection to that.

Mrs. ROGERS. That is for us to have the title or to hold in trust the title to those assets?

Mr. KENNEDY. We ought to have the assets in South America or anywhere else if it is to our advantage.

Mrs. ROGERS. Particularly if there is supposed to be an infiltration of nazi-ism and communism in some of the other American republics?

Mr. KENNEDY. In regard to that if we lend a lot of money we have the right to call for what assets we can use.

Mrs. ROGERS. Do you not think it would be wise to have written into this bill an amendment providing that those assets be transferred to the United States as security or to be held in trust for those things which we transfer to Great Britain, and also to make certain that those assets do not fall into Nazi control?

Mr. KENNEDY. I do not know that you need that particularly in the bill. It seems to me your agreement with Great Britain as to what they are going to give you for your material will take care of that situation. How it is best protected I would leave entirely

to the committee. I see no difficulty and I think I see no reason why we ought not to have those if they are of any advantage to us. Mrs. ROGERS. And, of course, a provision in the bill would cure that?

Mr. KENNEDY. I say, that is a point for you to decide.

Mrs. ROGERS. Would you be willing to state, Mr. Ambassador, what you feel is the strength of the British Army and Navy today? Mr. KENNEDY. I am not in a position to do so.

Mrs. ROGERS. I think you have already previously answered other questions, Mr. Ambassador.

I thank you very much.

Mr. SHANLEY. Mr. Chairman, and Your Excellency, I would like to ask unanimous consent to place in the record an article of the Baltimore Sun, and also I would like to put in an article written by Clare Booth entitled "Europe in the Spring." I did not have the benefit of that lovely lady's opposition in the last election, although I had her colleague's.

Mr. KENNEDY. There is only one thing, Mr. Congressman, I did not ask the Queen to dance.

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, the request of Mr. Shanley is complied with.

EUROPE IN THE SPRING

I said to our Ambassador, Mr. Joseph B. Kennedy: "You know, sometimes they are in so insolent, so sure of themselves, so smug, I feel as though it would do them good for once to be beaten.” He said, "Please remember, miss, we Americans can live quite comfortably in a world of English snobbery and British complacency, but we can't live—I should hate to live—in a world of Nazis and German brutality. Though they snub us or sneer at us, yet must we love them and aid them, because their heads may be a little thick, but they've got the right end of the stick. In the end they stand for all the things we stand for, and if they go we shall be the losers. Above all," he said, "they're the only crowd honest men can do business with." And because I knew that Mr. Kennedy wanted the English to win more than he wanted anything except to serve America as she thought he ought to serve her, I hated the way many of the English politicians talked about our Ambassador. They said it due to a remark he had made a speech in Massachusetts on his vacation: "All hell is going to break loose over there," and to his saying on his return to London in February: "America still doesn't know what this war is all about." He said to me on May 9, when I reminded him of that undiplomatic remark: "No apologies. The English can't know what this war is about eitheror they'd get ready fast to win it." And when I said to him: "But the English ask why you don't explain to America what it is all about," he replied: "My job is to explain America to the English, and I've told them over and over the American people don't want to go in, and the chances are they won't. Naturally, that makes me about as popular as a poison-ivy peddler at a Sunday-school picnic."

On April 25, in spite of our indignation over Norway, we still didn't know what the war was all about, and we never shall, I suppose, unless the English Navy is sunk, surrendered, or scuttled. Everybody said Kennedy was a "defeatist" who went around saying the most terrible untrue things; that America wasn't going to have time to get into the war-that America wouldn't help much even if it wanted to help, it was even more unprepared than the British-and that it would probably "all be over by Christmas." As every Englishman knew it would be a long war ("fought in our own way"), that could only mean one thing: Mr. Kennedy thought it was going to be a short war won by the Germans.

In short, Mr. Kennedy (if he was pestered enough) said all sorts of things that were undiplomatic and true as only bitter truth can be. Quite naturally the English didn't like Mr. Kennedy. They felt it was a peculiar misfortune that Poland had got a Biddle, who liked Poland, and France a Bullitt, who adored France and said publicly that everything the current French Government did was perfect, and that England had got an Irish-American isolationist like Mr. Kennedy. Whatever Mr. Kennedy goes down in history as, it will not be a second Walter Hines Page; of that you can be certain.

In the drawing rooms where they knew little of his efforts to aid the Empire in matters of trade and shipping and armament, their political aversion to him (as a "typical isolationist") was couched in very personal terms. They accused him at once of being a publicity hound and a recluse. They pointed out his shocking lack of "protocol," his gaucherie and American bad manners. One of many instances they quoted was his asking the Queen to dance before she had sent her equerry to ask him to ask her. Indeed, Halifax was rumored to have privately reprimanded him for his brash diplomatic red-tape cutting, and it was said that the entire diplomatic corps had decided that for the winter he was to be disciplined by being invited nowhere. It was a further cause for complaint that Mr. Kennedy didn't seem to mind that. He was nothing if not unsociable. Every day after he left his London office he retired quite happily to his country home in Windsor. Even this philosophical resignation was viewed with dark suspicion. The English implied that he wasn't a sportsman. In fact, "Run, rabbit, run," they nicknamed him, because he not only went to the country to be safe himself every night, but he had sent his wife and nine children to America. Why, they said, he was absolutely terrified of bombing, or (ha-ha) an English invasion. On the day of the Lowlands invasion Mr. Kennedy closed his place in Windsor and moved into his London residence, which has no bomb cellar, for the duration of the hostilities. And today England is trying desperately to send thousands of its own children and mothers to America, and Mr. Kennedy and all the members of his staff work day and night with very eager hearts to help them.

Mr. Kennedy was a poor diplomat because he touched on their sore spots roughly, but he was an honest Ambassador and a very good prophet. His war case history, however, has very little to do with Mr. Kennedy as a person. Before the war he was personally quite popular. Afterward he just became a symbol-a symbol of intolerable American isolationism, of the other yellow race, of our deliberate myopia. I mention all this now in no mischevious spirit, but merely to show you that even in late April in London our English brothers badly misunderstood themselves and us.

Mr. SHANLEY. You would not deny that juicy tidbit to the lady? Mr. KENNEDY. I remember seeing it in the newspaper story. It made good reading. Unfortunately, it is not true.

The CHAIRMAN. Proceed, Mr. Shanley.

Mr. SHANLEY. With reference to this surrender of power I do not believe that we have ever had a real domestic crisis in this country but what it was not necessary to surrender powers to the Chief Executive. I submit that that was what happened when we gave Jefferson powers in 1801, Jackson in 1928, Lincoln in 1861, Wilson in 1917, and Roosevelt in 1933. All of these with the exception of the grants to Lincoln and Wilson were domestic issues. Their action was absolutely necessary and speed was urgent. There have been so many sentimental journeys to the hallowed tombs of Mount Vernon in the course of this hearing that I suggest an aspect of The Farewell Address that is often forgotten. President George Washington never objected to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.

The CHAIRMAN. I will say this, that the statement referred to by Mrs. Rogers or someone about foreign entanglements was never mentioned by George Washington, but was made by Jefferson.

Mr. SHANLEY. In that speech there is a differentiation between a permanent alliance and one for extraordinary purpose. Mrs. ROGERS. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. SHANLEY. I certainly will.

Mrs. ROGERS. I did not make that statement.

The CHAIRMAN. I said whoever made it.

Mrs. ROGERS. I have made it on the floor, but I have not made it here.

Mr. SHANLEY. I say that because George Washington endorsed two alliances that we had with the French, and after all the aid we got from the French to win the Battle of Saratoga. George Washington realized all that. As one certainly opposed to administration policies since 1937, I will not allow anybody to come back from that hallowed tomb and bring back a perverted statement of what he thought. Just before the Monroe Doctrine was written Madison and Jefferson were in perfect sympathy with what Monroe wanted to do in the Monroe Doctrine. I think the Athenians learned they could not conduct a war in the market place. We cannot, and England cannot. You, in your comment on England, made some trenchant criticism of that and very much approbrium was piled on your head. I am wondering how the Congress in a vastly changed complex situation can ever be expected to delegate to a committee the authority to do it. During the Continental Congress they had to change it. I am just wondering how we could possibly give that authority and how we can foresee the dangers. I want to be frank, I do not think anybody who sincerely has the purpose of aiding the Allies can back anything but this bill. I think this bill is the most perfect bill that can be drawn for aiding the Allies.

Mr. KENNEDY. Congressman, I do not know I said all that, except that I said I do not think Congress should give up its powers. Do you favor that?

Mr. SHANLEY. What?

Mr. KENNEDY. Do you favor the abdication of congressional power in this?

Mr. SHANLEY. I do not favor the abdication of congressional power. When you say you believe there is an emergency we can touch on another assumption as to whether it is such a strong emergency that we must abdicate our congressional powers.

Mr. KENNEDY. First of all, what is the emergency that requires that?

Mr. SHANLEY. I am on the other side. I think those who created that idea which has been suggested to me should define that. Remember this bill does what is understood by international law, because we are on terms of amity and friendship with the totalitarian powers, that is, under the Neutrality Act.

But you and I know that ever since the change of that act in September of 1939 and later in November, we have violated all so-called neutrality. Now, what this bill appears to do is to take away the individual shopkeepers because ordinarily individual shopkeepers, the private citizens of the United States, have a right to trade with England. This bill appears to concentrate all the buying and purchasing, exchange and leasing powers in the Government per se and makes the Federal Government of the United States the honest shopkeeper of the whole country. I believe those people who want to aid England are absolutely right in having an individual buyer. I think the Allies learned that not only in the purchasing commission in 1916 and '17 but certainly in the elevation of Foch to the general command. Assuming there is this emergency, and that is questionable, of course, I do not see how we can give these powers up.

Mr. KENNEDY. Congressman, I have not admitted the emergency. May I read from my speech again?

Moreover, I appreciate full well that time is of the essence. Nevertheless, I am unable to agree with the proponents of this bill that it has yet been shown that we face such immediate danger as to justify this surrender of the authority and responsibility of the Congress. I believe that after the hearings have been completed there will be revealed less drastic ways of meeting the problem of adequate authority for the President.

Mr. SHANLEY. On the other hand, you do believe there is inevitably danger that through some of the acts we might be precipitated into this conflict and that is a risk you are perfectly willing to take? Mr. KENNEDY. No; I am not willing to take that risk.

Mr. SHANLEY. Then you do not think we can be the better for it if England's defenses are the worse for it?

Mr. KENNEDY. I do not follow the question.

Mr. SHANLEY. Our own defenses could not be the better for it if England's defenses are the worse for it?

Mr. KENNEDY. America's defenses cannot be the better for what? Mr. SHANLEY. If England's defenses are the worse for it?

Mr. KENNEDY. You will have to put that question some other way. Mr. SHANLEY. If we aid England that will defend England?

Mr. KENNEDY. Yes.

Mr. SHANLEY. And that must by itself help defend us?
Mr. KENNEDY. At the minute, yes.

Mr. SHANLEY. So that we have to emphasize, it is that aid to England that we must emphasize and any way that we are aided must be coincidental?

Mr. KENNEDY. No; I still maintain that so far as I am concerned my stress is to keep out of war. I am trying to fit ourselves into that problem.

Mr. SHANLEY. You have indicated some misgiving. You say that convoying by our ships would amount to an act of war and that you yourself will not go that far. Of course, there may be other angles. You know during the World War we had belligerent ships lying outside of New York harbor. We could ask them to keep away from our shore. Assuming that the Boston Navy Yard becomes a base of supply we know that violates all of the declarations we have had at the Pan-American Conference, at Montevideo and the conference at Panama. But assuming it becomes a base of supply you must inevitably expect to see German submarines outside the international limit, although the attempt is to get them outside of the 300-mile limit. Are we not preparing a risk that would seem to inevitably bring us into this war?

Mr. KENNEDY. I think that is a very good question, Congressman, though again you have to take what a man is most likely to think rather than to consider what he will do. It strikes me that Germany at the present moment does not want to see us in this war. If they did they would have had every reason to have us in it before. As long as it is not to their interest for us to get in they will not get us in.

Mr. SHANLEY. I agree with that whole-heartedly.

Mr. KENNEDY. That is the point. At best you have to take some risk. After all you cannot be in this situation without taking some risk and I am perfectly willing to take some risk. I would like to