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That the subject of the President's speech last week was not known in advance by no means indicated that it was the result either of hasty decision or of hasty preparation. Throughout his Western tour Franklin Roosevelt was in close touch with Washington. Well-worn pigskin Presidential mail pouches went to and from the train with incessant regularity. While he stopped beside a road in Washington to watch a "high-rigger" lumberjack lop the top off a fir tree, another kind of high-rigger slung a wire across the single telephone wire along the road, handed the instrument to the President's Secretary Marvin Mclntyre. Spadework on last week's speech was presumably done in the State Department by specialists like Ambassador-at-Large Norman Davis. The President presumably reworked their drafts—adding appropriate passages from Lost Horizon—as his train sped east with few visitors aboard.
Vague as the word "quarantine" might be, it clearly indicated that the President was prepared to use diplomatic if not economic pressure on international bullies. It left no doubt whatever that he intended to frame U. S. foreign policy to encourage peace not only by being a good neighbor. but by restraining bad neighbors. Next day his own Secretary of State Cordell Hull took the first step to put this new policy into effect.
General Accord. Meeting in Geneva, the League of Nations' Far Eastern Advisory Committee received news of the President's speech six hours before it was delivered. Promptly the wheels of diplomacy began to revolve as scheduled. The Committee drew up a resolution carefully avoiding the word "war," but condemning Japan as an "invader," and accusing her of an infringement of the Nine-Power Treaty (guaranteeing China's territorial integrity) signed in 1922 by China, Japan, the U. S., Great Britain, France, Italy, The Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal. Next day, in Geneva, the League Assembly unanimously adopted the Committee's resolution and the stage was set for Cordell Hull to put the new U. S. foreign policy in practice. With no waste of time and no more than necessary diplomatic euphemism the Department of State denounced Japan:
"In the light of the unfolding developments in the Far East the Government of the United States has been forced to the conclusion that the action of Japan in China is inconsistent with the principles which should govern the relationships between nations and is contrary to the provisions of the Nine-Power Treaty of Feb. 6, 1922, regarding principles and policies to be followed in matters concerning China, and to those of the Kellogs-Briand pact of Aug. 27, 1928. Thus the conclusions of this Government with respect to the foregoing are in general accord with those of the Assembly of the League of Nations."
Only immediate effect of this announcement was to make Japanese diplomats slightly uncomfortable; only certain practical result, to give assurance that the U. S. would sit in with other signatories of the Nine-Power Treaty when they confer, probably within two weeks, on what to do about Japan. On the morning that the President reached Washington, after two days at Hyde Park, he called in Secretary Hull, Ambassador-at-Large Norman Davis —who may well be the U. S. Conference delegate—and Sumner Welles.