Mr. Joseph Kennedy may or may not be returning to
Lon- don as American Ambassador, but things have undeniably been made rather difficult for him in both his own country and this by the observations attributed to him by the Boston Globe, and still more by the inadequacy of his repudiation of them. What he is alleged to have said is that democracy was finished in England; that it would be succeeded by National Socialism; and that the same thing might happen in the United States if the United States went to war. Challenged regarding the state- ment the Ambassador only protested that what was quoted was a private conversation and that anyway it was incorrectly quoted. There seems to have been no withdrawal of the offend- ing phrases. For offending they certainly are in one way if not another. Whatever may be thought of the tact of saying of a country which claims to be fighting for democracy that demo- cracy is dead in it, the statement as a statement is absurd, and if Mr. Kennedy did make such a statement, or anything like it, he compels the conclusion that he used his opportunities for observation in the past three years singularly ill.
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