quo in the Pacific until Great Britain should be successful in the European war, it would be impossible for the opportunist philosophy in Japan to keep the upper hand; then it might be possible to undertake a readjustment of the whole Pacific problem on an equitable basis. Until there was in Japan a complete regeneration of thought, he said, nothing but a show of force coupled with the determination that force would be used if necessary could effectively contribute to such an outcome and to the future security of the United States. ( ()

Japanese Penetration Into Indochina

Even before the French-German armistice was signed in June 1940 the Japanese militarists began to exert pressure on French Indochina. Throughout the summer of 1940 this pressure continued. On September 22, following a Japanese ultimatum involving a threat of force, a military agreement concluded between the French and Japanese authorities provided for Japan's use of three airdromes and for the transit, in case of operations against China, of Japanese troops. Notwithstanding this agreement, Japanese forces attacked Indochina and occupied several strategic points there. On September 23 Secretary of State Hull, referring to these events in Indochina, declared that it seemed obvious that the status quo there was being upset "under duress"; he repeated that the United States disapproved and deprecated such procedures. ( )

On September 27, 1940 announcement was made of the conclusion of the treaty of alliance between Germany, Italy, and Japan containing a threat against the United States. (See page 81)

Restrictions on Exports to Japan

The "moral embargoes" of 1938 and 1939, referred to previously, brought about the cessation of the export to Japan of airplanes, aeronautic equipment, and certain other materials. As the rearmament program in the United States gained momentum and required more and more available strategic materials, this Government gradually adopted measures, legislative and administrative, which resulted in a steady decline of export to Japan of such materials. The Export Control Act of July 2, 1940 authorized the President, in the interest of national defense, to prohibit or curtail the export of basic war materials. Under that act, licenses were refused for the export to Japan of aviation gasoline and most types of machine tools, beginning in August 1940. After it was announced in September that the export of iron and steel scrap would be prohibited, Japanese Ambassador Horinouchi protested to Secretary Hull on October 8, 1940 that this might be considered an "unfriendly act". The Secretary told

the Ambassador that it was really "amazing" for the Japanese Government, which had been violating in the most aggravating manner American rights and interests throughout most of China, to question the fullest right of this Government to impose such an embargo. To go further and call it an "unfriendly act", the Secretary said, was still more amazing in the light of Japan's conduct in disregarding all law, treaty obligations, and other rights and privileges and the safety of Americans, while proceeding to an ever-increasing extent to seize territory by force. The Ambassador replied that he very much regretted the differences between Japan and the United States and that strife between them would be extremely tragic for both. Secretary Hull agreed that such an occurrence would be exceedingly unfortunate but added that this Government had been extremely patient. The Secretary went on to say that we stood for law and order and treaty observance and justice, along with genuine friendliness between the two countries; that it was clear now, however, that those dominating the external policy of Japan were, “as we here have believed for some years, bent on the conquest by force of all worthwhile territory in the Pacific Ocean area without limit as to extent in the south and in southern continental areas of that part of the world". Furthermore, we and all other nations were expected by Japan to sit perfectly quiet and be cheerful and agreeable, but static, while most of Asia was "Manchurianized", which would render practically impossible all reasonable or satisfactory relations so far as other nations were concerned, and would result ultimately in correspondingly lower levels of existence for the people of most of Asia. The Secretary reiterated that it was unheard-of for a country engaged in aggression and seizure of another country, contrary to all law and treaty provisions, to turn to a third nation and seriously insist that the latter would be guilty of an unfriendly act if it did not cheerfully provide some of the necessary implements of war to aid the aggressor nation in carrying out its policy of invasion. The Secretary made clear to the Ambassador this Government's view that Germany and Japan were undertaking to subjugate both of their respective areas of the world and to place them on an international order and a social basis resembling that of eight centuries ago. () Despite the Japanese protest, a total embargo on the export of iron and steel scrap to destinations other than countries of the Western Hemisphere and Great Britain went into effect on October 16, 1940.

The effect of United States policy in regard to exports to Japan was that by the winter of 1940-41 shipment had ceased of many strategic commodities including arms, ammunition, and implements of war, aviation gasoline and many other petroleum products, machine tools, scrap iron, pig iron, iron and steel manufactures, copper, lead, zinc, aluminum, and a variety of other commodities important to war effort.

XIII EUROPEAN WAR 1941

The Four Freedoms

In his address to Congress on January 6, 1941 President Roosevelt declared that "at no previous time has American security been as seriously threatened from without as it is today". The democratic way of life was being directly assailed "by arms, or by secret spreading of poisonous propaganda" in every part of the world. The President said that the assault had blotted out the whole pattern of democratic life in an appalling number of independent nations and that the assailants were still on the march threatening other nations, great and small. Armed defense of democratic existence was being waged on four continents; if that defense failed, all the population and all the resources of Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australasia would be dominated by the conquerors.

The President defined our national policy as follows: We were committed to an all-inclusive national defense; we were committed to full support of resolute peoples everywhere who were resisting aggression and were thereby keeping war away from our hemisphere; and we were committed to the proposition that principles of morality and considerations for our own security would "never permit us to acquiesce in a peace dictated by aggressors and sponsored by appeasers".

President Roosevelt said that we looked forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms: Freedom of speech and expression; freedom of every person to worship God in his own way; freedom from want-which meant economic understandings that would secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants; freedom from fear-which meant a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point that no nation would be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor. These four essential human freedoms constituted a definite basis for the kind of world attainable in our own time and generation, the kind of world which is "the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb". ()

The President's budget message of this month, January 1941, called for the expenditure of approximately $11,000,000,000 for the nationaldefense program. This raised to $28,000,000,000 the estimated outlay for the defense program inaugurated in May 1940.

Lend-Lease Act

Early in January 1941 there was introduced in Congress a bill to enable the Government to furnish aid to nations whose defense was deemed by the President to be vital to the defense of the United States. Both Houses of Congress held extensive public hearings on the bill. Secretary Hull made a statement before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on January 15 in support of the bill. In this statement the Secretary declared that it had become increasingly apparent that mankind was face to face with an organized, ruthless, and implacable movement of steadily-expanding conquest; that we were in the presence of forces which were not restrained by considerations of law or principles of morality; that these forces had no fixed limits for their program of conquest; that they had spread over large areas on land and were desperately struggling to seize control of the oceans as an essential means of achieving and maintaining the conquest of other continents. The Secretary stated that control of the high seas by law-abiding nations "is the key to the security of the Western Hemisphere"; that should such control be gained by the Axis powers, the danger to the United States "would be multiplied manyfold”. The most serious question for the United States, the Secretary said, was whether the control of the high seas would pass into the hands of powers bent on a program of unlimited conquest.

The Secretary felt that on no other question of public policy were the people of the United States so nearly unanimous and so emphatic as they were on that of the imperative need, in our own most vital interest, to give Great Britain and other victims of attack the maximum of material aid in the shortest possible space of time. This was so because it was clear that such assistance to those resisting attack was a vital part of our national self-defense. The bill before the Committee, he said, known as the Lend-Lease bill, provided for machinery which would enable the United States to make the most effective use of our resources for our own needs and for those whom, in our own self-defense, we were determined to aid. The Secretary expressed the belief that this bill would make it possible for us to allocate our resources in ways best calculated to provide for the security of the United States and of this continent. ( )

The Lend-Lease bill became law with the signature of the President on March 11, 1941. Immediately thereafter the President requested an appropriation of $7,000,000,000 to accomplish the objectives of the act, and that appropriation was speedily made. ()

In an address on March 15 President Roosevelt stated that the decision embodied in the Lend-Lease Act ended the urging that we get along with the dictators and ended the compromise with tyranny and the forces of oppression. When our production output was in full

swing, he said, the democracies of the world would be able to prove that dictators could not win. The time element he considered of "supreme importance". Every plane, every other instrument of war, old and new, which we could spare would be sent overseas; the great task of the day, the deep duty which rested upon us, was to "move products from the assembly lines of our factories to the battle lines of democracies-Now!"

The President said that the Nazi forces were not asking mere modifications in colonial maps or in minor European boundaries; that they openly sought the destruction of all elective systems of government on every continent-including our own; that they sought to establish systems of government based on the regimentation of all human beings by a handful of individual rulers who had seized power by force.

The nation, he said, was calling for the sacrifice of some privileges but not for the sacrifice of fundamental rights. Referring to the four freedoms set forth in his January address, the President said that they might not be immediately attainable throughout the world but "humanity does move towards those ideals through democratic processes". If we failed and democracy were superseded by slavery, "then those four freedoms or even the mention of them will become forbidden things".

There was no longer any doubt, he said, that our people recognized the seriousness of the international situation. That was why they had demanded and obtained "a policy of unqualified, immediate, all-out aid for Britain, Greece, China, and for all the governments in exile whose homelands are temporarily occupied by the aggressors". Aid would be increased, he emphasized, "and yet again increased", until total victory had been won. ( )

In instructions shortly thereafter to United States diplomatic missions in several neutral European countries, the Secretary of State said that every effort should be made to see that this authoritative statement by the President of our position was circulated as widely as possible. He said a salutary effect on public and official opinion in countries which had not been drawn directly into the war, would result from a forceful, continuous presentation of the position of the United States and of the scope of our national effort and determination to resist aggression. Such a presentation also would be of great assistance in counteracting totalitarian propaganda. The missions were to stress that we were absolutely convinced that the forces of aggression would be defeated. It had been made abundantly clear by our people and Government, the Secretary said, that we intended to play our part in resistance against the forces of aggression. Therefore, it was incumbent upon every representative of the United States and upon every United States citizen abroad to reflect "the

498519-42— -8