Father Coughlin continues to Anger

Father Charles Coughlin, a Roman Catholic Priest and Radio broadcaster, again brought scathing anti-Semitic remarks into his religious radio broadcast.

He leads a political party by the name of the Christian Front out of Detroit. He led the National Union for Social Justice until its transformation into the Christian Front last year. He has claimed that there is a Jewish-Bolshevik Threat to the United States. He has also joined in with the Isolationists in saying "Less care for internationalism and more concern for national prosperity."

The Roman Catholic Church has said that they can only disagree with the priest. They cannot make him stop using the radio as a medium to reach the masses.

He again made inflammatory remarks on his November 30th broadcast. With the increasing violence against Jews in Europe, there are murmurs that Coughlin is accepting money from the Nazis. It may be possible. He has been growing further critical of FDR in the past four years and praised Hitler for his anti-Jewish policies.

He has also found it harder to fund his radio broadcasts as of late. Even with a 1 million and more circulation of his journal Social Justice Weekly. It is assumed that he must be accepting money from abroad. Not even the Bishop of Detroit could fund this.

This journalist assumes the FBI to look into any Nazi connections the priest may have. If the agency is not currently doing so, then get to it!

US Congress votes for rearmament

Despite the amount of time it took for the United States to join in the Great War and its isolationist politics, the Congress has voted to begin rearmament. Navies are particularly slow to build up and the legislature gave its authorization to the Navy to begin expansion.

Secretary Hull speaks of Foreign Policy

The Secretary of State in an address at Washington, March 17, 1938, declared that the momentous question was whether the doctrine of force would once more become enthroned or whether the United States and other peaceful nations would work unceasingly to preserve law, order, morality, and justice as the bases of civilized international relations.

The Secretary said that the United States might, if it chose, turn its back on the whole problem and decline the responsibility of contributing to its solution. But he warned of what such a choice would involve. It would mean a voluntary abandonment of some of the most important things that had made us great; an abject retreat before the forces which we had consistently opposed throughout our whole national history. Our security would be menaced as other nations came to believe that through fear or unwillingness we did not propose to protect our legitimate interests abroad, but intended to abandon them at the first sign of danger. The sphere of all of our international relations would shrink until we stood practically alone among the nations, "a self-constituted hermit state". We would find it necessary to reorganize our entire social and economic structure, which would mean lower living standards, regimentation, and wide-spread economic distress.

All this, the Secretary said, would be done in order to avoid war. But, he asked, would this policy give any such assurance? He believed that reason and experience definitely pointed to the contrary. We might seek to withdraw from participation in world affairs, "but we cannot thereby withdraw from the world itself". Isolation, he declared, "is not a means to security; it is a fruitful source of insecurity".

Secretary Hull emphasized that for the sake of our own best interests we must maintain our influence in world affairs and our participation in efforts toward world progress and peace. Only by making our reasonable contribution to a firm establishment of a world order based on law "can we keep the problem of our own security in true perspective, and thus discharge our responsibility to ourselves".

US President calls for Quarantine

The President of the United States of America, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, gave a speech in Chicago yesterday. In it, he proposed a "quarantine of the aggressor nations" such as Japan and Italy.

The prevailing political thought right now in the United States is one of neutrality and isolationism. The Neutrality Act, signed on August 31, 1935, forbid the US from shipping arms of ammunition to Italy or Abyssinia, though that crisis has ended.

Mr. Roosevelt seems to be suggesting economic measures be taken against aggressor nations rather than reacting to aggression with aggression. In other words, put water on the fire, not more fire!

Neutrality Act Extension to go back to Congress

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee unanimously recommended to the Senate today the extension, with only minor modifications, of the existing Neutrality Act until May 1, 1937. The move was made with the intent of shelving further neutrality discussion at this session of Congress.

Representative Kloeb of Ohio introduced a parallel measure in the House, and said he would ask the Foreign Affairs Committee to report it favorably as soon as possible. It is apparent the administration is working to push the extension through congress before the February 29th expiration.

Secretary Hull also noted that the administration would not oppose the dropping of its own neutrality proposal.

Senator Clark opposes the plan of putting consideration of a permanent neutrality policy over to the next session of Congress. He plans to amend the Pittman continuing resolution so that the present temporary plan would extended for only a matter of 60 days.

He noted that just because its an election year and members are involved in their respective campaigns, for action to be deferred.

Senator Johnson also has commented that many people are mistaken about the virtue of the neutrality act. He believes that the act would likely involved the nation in another war rather than keep us out.