America's Neutrality Rather too much appears to have been read
in some quarters into the semi-official announcement that President Roosevelt is contemplating legislation virtually abandoning America's claim to neutral rights in time of war. No American would care to see his country placed again in the position in which she found herself in 1915 and 1916, but it cannot be imagined that Mr. Roosevelt is thinking of simply leaving American merchant ships at the mercy of belligerent cruisers. What is pre- sumably in his mind is legislation embodying the important pledge given by Mr. Norman Davis on the President's behalf at the Disarmament Conference in May of last year, that if the League of Nations States were taking collective action against an aggressor, and the United States took the same view of the latter's guilt, we will refrain from any action tending to defeat such collective efforts which these States may thus make to restore peace." Such a step would remove two-thirds of the objections to joint naval action against an aggressor, and be the best guarantee that such action would never be necessary at all. * * * *
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