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Home Politics. To the U. S. public, China is symbolized by Confucius, Ming vases, heroic missionaries, clean shirts and Charlie Chan. Japan means harakiri, imperialism, post cards of Fujiyama, and the Yellow Peril. That Franklin Roosevelt had correctly gauged public psychology in giving a cue to all good citizens that the time had come when moral indignation need no longer be suppressed appeared from, the swift reaction to his speech. Europe naturally was pleased but the U. S. press also produced more words of approval, some enthusiastic and some tempered, than have greeted any Roosevelt step in many a month.
Colonel Frank Knox, publisher of the Chicago Daily News who a year ago, as Republican candidate for Vice President was violently denouncing Franklin Roosevelt, declared "the President's speech was magnificent." The New York Times and the Washington Post published a long letter from Herbert Hoover's Secretary of State Henry Stimson. Mostly written before the President's speech, the letter ended with a paragraph written after it in which the statesman who guided U. S. policy in the last Sino-Japanese crisis in 1931-32 said he was "filled with hope" that "this act of leadership . . . will result in a new birth of American courage. . . ." The A. F. of L. urged its members to boycott Japanese goods.
Opposition there was from diverse sources: from the Wall Street Journal which front-paged an editorial "Stop Foreign Meddling; America Wants Peace;" from World Peaceways and five other passive-peace organizations; from Senator Gerald P. Nye, sponsor of Neutrality legislation; from Columnist Hugh Johnson who wrote: "Well, here we are again, taking sides in a War." It appeared, however, working with the most popular member of his Cabinet, the President had, at least for the time being, once more won political support from many whom he had alienated. Besides putting the bothersome question of Justice Hugo Black out of the headlines, he had provided himself with an active-peace issue which promised to remain popular unless it threatened to involve the U. S. in war. Meantime he kept the nation guessing whether his proposed quarantine was to consist of diplomatic pressure, of voluntary boycotts of Japanese goods, or some positive form of economic sanctions.