Foreign policy to get test in Senate
Bipartisan showdown may affect campaign
By Jay G. Hayden, North American Newspaper Alliance
Washington –
A bipartisan showdown with regard to American foreign policy, which is bound to affect vitally the approaching presidential campaign and may determine this country’s international relationship for years to come, will get underway in a Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee this week.
This is the committee asked by Secretary of State Cordell Hull “to secure as great unanimity among the American people and Congress as possible with respect to the basic post-war security program.”
Its membership consists of Democrats Chairman Tom Connally (D-TX), Walter F. George (D-GA), Alben W. Barkley (D-KY) and Guy M. Gillette (D-IA), Republicans Arthur H. Vandenberg (R-MI), Wallace White (R-ME) and Warren R. Austin (R-VT) and Progressive Robert M. La Follette (PR-WI).
La Follette opposed
A degree of friction entered into the formulation of the roster. The administration did not want Senator La Follette included in it, and when Senator Vandenberg, who had nominated Mr. La Follette as one of the three minority members, refused to proceed without him, one additional member was added each to the Democratic and Republican sides.
The obvious intention of this maneuver was to strengthen the administration hand, since Senator Austin has never varied even so much as a hair’s breadth from support of President Roosevelt’s foreign policies.
Senator Vandenberg’s position is understood to have been that Mr. La Follette was entitled to the place from the standpoints both of seniority and ability, and, in any event, there can be no real solidarity of American foreign policy unless it takes account of the Midwestern nationalism, for which Mr. La Follette speaks.
Full cooperation demanded
While nobody so far has been able to put their hands on it, there is rumored to have been a significant correspondence between the Republican and Democratic Senate wings.
The crux of the position of Senator Vandenberg, personally, is that he is willing to go the limit in bipartisan cooperation, even to the point of devoting all his time to the effort from now on and abstaining from any part in the approaching presidential campaign.
But, Mr. Vandenberg insists, this sort of cooperation is practicable only if it proceeds on the basis of a completely equal Democratic-Republican partnership in formulation of foreign policies and an equal Democratic abstinence from their use for electioneering purposes.
Electioneering fought
Particularly, Senator Vandenberg is said to have insisted that Mr. Roosevelt, no less than the State Department, must be completely tied into any interparty harmony arrangement that may be affected.
Reduced to its most blunt political implication, the Republicans intend to see to it that, if a bipartisan foreign policy entente is entered into, Mr. Roosevelt is foreclosed from going out in the weeks immediately before election and saying, “See how effectively I have brought the Republicans to heel.”